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* BoundAndGagged: As part of a classroom renactment of an Indian Princess' kidnapping in the second episode.
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Changed line(s) 345 (click to see context) from:
* {{Flanderization}}: Into a massive racist. Combining with OutOfFocus as shown below and you get a character who now does little more than spout racist one-liners before shuffling out of focus again, which was reportedly one of the main reasons Chevy Chase was increasingly frustrated with and dismissive of the show.
to:
* {{Flanderization}}: Into Especially in Season 4, into a massive racist. Combining with OutOfFocus as shown below and you get a character who now does little more than spout racist one-liners before shuffling out of focus again, which was reportedly one of the main reasons Chevy Chase was increasingly frustrated with and dismissive of the show.
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*HeldGaze: With [[FanPreferredPairing Annie]], leading to quite a lot of their {{Shiptease}}.
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* ClingyJealousGirl: [[spoiler:She does this to Jeff at the start of season 2.]]
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* ClingyJealousGirl: [[spoiler:She does this to Jeff at the start of season 2.2, but soon grows out of it.]]
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*HeldGaze: With [[FanPreferredPairing Jeff]] and any time they gaze into each other's eyes (which is basically their ship's {{UST}} M.O by now), expect a {{Shiptease}}.
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Changed line(s) 223 (click to see context) from:
* DeadpanSnarker: Almost as snarky as Jeff.
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* DeadpanSnarker: Almost Just as snarky as Jeff.Jeff, if not ''more'' so.
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* DeadpanSnarker: Not nearly as much as Jeff or Britta, but he can do this occasionally when he goes in SarcasmMode.
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Changed line(s) 237 (click to see context) from:
* HellBentForLeather: Was once referred to as the girl with “the infinite supply of leather jackets”. The thread of Britta's hypocrisy is reflected in her attempt to look like a sexy bad ass in animal skins while professing proudly not to eat them. Eventually she undergoes a wardrobe makeover sans leather jackets symbolic of her being less hypocritical and perhaps less of a sexy bad-ass as well.
to:
* HellBentForLeather: Was once referred to as the girl with “the infinite supply of leather jackets”. The thread of Britta's hypocrisy is reflected in her attempt to look like a sexy bad ass badass in animal skins while professing proudly not to eat them. Eventually she undergoes a wardrobe makeover sans leather jackets symbolic of her being less hypocritical and perhaps less of a sexy bad-ass badass as well.
Changed line(s) 263,264 (click to see context) from:
'''Britta:''' Are people using my name as slang to mean "make a small mistake?"
** Deconstructed in "Herstory as Dance"; during his WhatTheHellHero speech to Jeff about his {{Jerkass}} behaviour to Britta, Pierce points out that Jeff persistently using a friend's name as a synonym for screwing up and failure is a good indicator that Jeff's actually a pretty crappy friend. Humbled by this, in his congratulatory text to Britta after the concert she organises goes well Jeff makes a point of saying that she "Britta'd the hell out of it".
** Deconstructed in "Herstory as Dance"; during his WhatTheHellHero speech to Jeff about his {{Jerkass}} behaviour to Britta, Pierce points out that Jeff persistently using a friend's name as a synonym for screwing up and failure is a good indicator that Jeff's actually a pretty crappy friend. Humbled by this, in his congratulatory text to Britta after the concert she organises goes well Jeff makes a point of saying that she "Britta'd the hell out of it".
to:
'''Britta:''' Are people using my name as slang to mean "make a small mistake?"
mistake"?
** Deconstructed in"Herstory as Dance"; "[[Recap/CommunityS4E08HerstoryOfDance Herstory of Dance]]"; during his WhatTheHellHero speech to Jeff about his {{Jerkass}} behaviour to Britta, Pierce [[DumbassHasAPoint points out that Jeff persistently using a friend's name as a synonym for screwing up and failure is a good indicator that Jeff's actually a pretty crappy friend. friend]]. Humbled by this, in his congratulatory text to Britta after the concert she organises organizes goes well Jeff makes a point of saying that she "Britta'd the hell out of it".
** Deconstructed in
Changed line(s) 266 (click to see context) from:
* PlayingGertrude: Though not obscenely so. In the first episode (which originally aired on September 17, 2009) Abed tells Jeff that her 29th birthday is coming up in October. Gillian Jacobs ''did'' have her birthday—her ''27th'' birthday—on October 13, 2009.
to:
* PlayingGertrude: Though not obscenely so. Downplayed. In the first episode of the series (which originally aired on September 17, 2009) 2009), when Jeff asks Abed tells Jeff what he knows about Britta, he mentions that her 29th birthday is coming up in October. Gillian Jacobs ''did'' have her birthday—her ''27th'' birthday—on October 13, 2009.
Changed line(s) 269 (click to see context) from:
* [[spoiler:RapeAsBackstory: While it may not have been rape, it has been implied that she was molested by a man in a dinosaur costume when she was 11. With the way the show has spun it, it seems like it may also count as BlackComedyRape.]]
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* [[spoiler:RapeAsBackstory: While it may not have been rape, it has been implied that she was molested by a man in a dinosaur costume when she was 11.eleven. With the way the show has spun it, it seems like it may also count as BlackComedyRape.]]
Changed line(s) 275,277 (click to see context) from:
--> '''Annie:''' You're anti-wedding now?
--> '''Jeff:''' No, she's just pro-anti.
--> '''Britta:''' No to everything you both said!
--> '''Jeff:''' No, she's just pro-anti.
--> '''Britta:''' No to everything you both said!
to:
Changed line(s) 280 (click to see context) from:
* StrawFeminist: It's frequently made clear that her understanding of feminism is flawed and that she mainly tends to use her feminist causes as a way of feeling superior over others.
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* StrawFeminist: It's frequently made clear that her understanding of feminism is flawed and that she mainly tends to use her feminist causes as a way of feeling superior over others.
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* TookALevelInDumbass: Lampshaded by Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E18CourseListingUnavailable Course Listing Unavailable]]”:
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* TookALevelInDumbass: Unfortunate, but quite logically sound; Britta was the only member of the study group actively disconnected from mainstream society before the events of the show, and [[SuckySchool Greendale]] is [[{{Understatement}} not the best place in which to reintegrate into mainstream society]]. Lampshaded by Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E18CourseListingUnavailable Course Listing Unavailable]]”:
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* TotallyRadical: Moreso after she TookALevelInDumbass.
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* TotallyRadical: Moreso More so after she TookALevelInDumbass.
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* WomenAreWiser: None of the characters is a flawless human being, but she tries to act, invoke and otherwise claim this trope (particularly for herself) more than the others, which tends to lead to HypocriticalHumor when reality or her own character flaws trip her up and prove her wrong—usually immediately after. She does admit at one point that she doesn’t really consider herself to be so deep down, however, and her heart is generally in the right place even if there’s a gulf between her opinion of herself and the reality.
to:
* WomenAreWiser: None of the characters is a flawless human being, but she tries to act, invoke and otherwise claim this trope (particularly for herself) more than the others, which tends to lead to HypocriticalHumor when reality or her own character flaws trip her up and prove her wrong—usually immediately after.in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. She does admit at one point that she doesn’t really consider herself to be so deep down, however, and her heart is generally in the right place even if there’s a gulf between her opinion of herself and the reality.
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* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
to:
* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
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** We finally see what Annie looked like during high school in “[[Recap/CommunityS4E12HeroicOrigins Heroic Origins]],” and she looks exactly as she does in the present day but with glasses, braces, and messy hair.
to:
** We finally see what Annie looked like during high school in “[[Recap/CommunityS4E12HeroicOrigins i the start of season 2.]]2HeroicOrigins Heroic Origins]],” and she looks exactly as she does in the present day but with glasses, braces, and messy hair.
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* StopHavingFunGuy: In general, his rather snide and cooler-than-thou attitude and efforts to demonstrate aloof and ironic detachment at all times can sometimes mean that he can ruin the fun a bit (alternatively, he can seem to have it most at the expense of someone else). Seems especially the case in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]]” [[spoiler:where the timeline resulting in him going to get the pizza is ultimately the one were everyone ends up having the most fun]].
to:
* StopHavingFunGuy: In general, his rather snide and cooler-than-thou attitude and efforts to demonstrate aloof and ironic detachment at all times and his tendency to moderate and police the behaviour of his friends to conform with his standards of 'normal' can sometimes mean that he can ruin the fun a bit (alternatively, bit. Alternatively, his sense of humour is rather cutting and mean, and he can frequently seem to have it most at the expense of someone else).else, which can also have the same effect. Seems especially the case in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]]” [[spoiler:where the timeline resulting in him going to get the pizza is ultimately the one were everyone ends up having the most fun]].
Changed line(s) 236 (click to see context) from:
* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
to:
* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
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Changed line(s) 627 (click to see context) from:
* InformedJudaism
to:
* InformedJudaismInformedJudaism: Like with Abed being a Muslim, the fact that she is Jewish only really comes up in Christmas episodes.
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Changed line(s) 7 (click to see context) from:
[[folder: '''Villains''']]
to:
[[folder: '''Villains''']]'''As a Whole''']]
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[[folder: '''As a Whole''']]
to:
[[folder: '''As a Whole''']]'''Villains''']]
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* TenderTears: Troy cries incredibly easily, and is, to quote Abed, "deeply ashamed of the fact."
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* TotallyRadical: Moreso after she TookALevelInDumbass.
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Changed line(s) 684 (click to see context) from:
* BreakoutCharacter
to:
* BreakoutCharacterBreakoutCharacter: Along with Abed and Annie, Troy ended up becoming the breakout member of the study group. So much so that, [[spoiler: Donald Golver's real-life departure from the show ended up being seen as the final death nail.]]
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* LonersAreFreaks: More of a straight example in the earlier episodes likely due to pre-{{Character Development}}.
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* ActorSharedBackground: Donald Glover was raised a Jehovah’s Witness.
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* ActorAllusion: Characters will often mock Jeff by calling him Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest is [=McHale’s=] RealLife SitcomArchNemesis.
* ActorSharedBackground: Jeff lived in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} in his youth, as did Joel [=McHale=].
* ActorSharedBackground: Jeff lived in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} in his youth, as did Joel [=McHale=].
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* ActorAllusion: Jeff and Chang laughing about Cherry Daiquiri, and then talking to Britta. (Gillian Jacobs played Cherry Daiquiri in the movie version of ''Literature/{{Choke}}''.)
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* ActorAllusion: Pierce’s father's name is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Chase Cornelius]], and he lives on “Cranesworth Road”.
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* PlayingAgainstType: Most of Chevy Chase’s more popular characters have tended to be smooth, suave and the smartest (or at least wittiest) guy in the room. Pierce Hawthorne? Not so much.
Deleted line(s) 398 (click to see context) :
* ActorSharedBackground: Abed is half-Polish, as is his actor, Danny Pudi.
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* DawsonCasting: Abed’s exact age is never specified, but he’s probably in his early twenties. Danny Pudi was 30 when the series began airing.
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* FakeNationality: Abed and his dad as Palestinians, or as any kind of Arab: Danny Pudi (Abed) is half-Indian and half-Polish (and grew up speaking Polish in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}), while Iqbal Theba (Abed’s dad) is Pakistani. The Arabic they speak in “Introduction to Film,” however, is real.
Deleted line(s) 452 (click to see context) :
** WordOfGod from [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/community-creator-dan-harmon,45508/ this interview with creator Dan Harmon]] states that Abed will never directly break the FourthWall.
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* ActorAllusion: Subverted by Yvette Nicole Brown in RealLife. On Mother’s Day 2012, she tweeted “Thanks for all the sweet Mother’s Day wishes—but I’m not a mom, I just play one on television.”
** Played straight when she mentions the movie poster with “[[Film/TheUglyTruth the heart over the man’s junk]]” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E07IntroductionToStatistics Introduction to Statistics]]”. Yvette was in this movie.
** Played straight when she mentions the movie poster with “[[Film/TheUglyTruth the heart over the man’s junk]]” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E07IntroductionToStatistics Introduction to Statistics]]”. Yvette was in this movie.
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* ActorSharedBackground: Both Annie’s InformedJudaism and sexual encounter with a homosexual man are drawn from Alison Brie’s life.
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* DawsonCasting: Annie was 19 years old when the series began, while Alison Brie was 26.
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* ActorAllusion: In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E11ThePoliticsOfHumanSexuality The Politics of Human Sexuality]]”, when Pierce discusses bringing a date to the STD fair, Troy muses “There’s a joke here,” and begins to write in his notebook. Donald Glover, in addition to being an actor and musician, is also a standup comedian. In “Advanced Criminal Law”, Abed mentions that Troy, as a joke, says he is related to Danny Glover.
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* DawsonCasting[=/=]PlayingGertrude: Donald Glover is actually nine months ''younger'' than Alison Brie, roles more or less inverted by their respective characters.
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Changed line(s) 433 (click to see context) from:
** He’s even GenreSavvy about having an AmbiguousDisorder—he got out of a conversation with Chang where he was caught in a lie by pretending to ‘glitch’ in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E12AsianPopulationStudies Asian Population Studies]]”, making Chang go away in frustration.
to:
** He’s even GenreSavvy about having an AmbiguousDisorder—he got out of a conversation with Chang where he was caught in a lie by pretending to ‘glitch’ glitch in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E12AsianPopulationStudies Asian Population Studies]]”, making Chang go away in frustration.
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* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: His encyclopedic command of tropes gives him the full-on power of prophecy. He shot a video where the study group bands together to stop Jeff from living out of his car … ''the week before it happened to the characters themselves''.
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* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: His encyclopedic command of tropes gives him the full-on power of prophecy. He shot a video where the study group bands together to stop Jeff from living out of his car … car... ''the week before it happened to the characters themselves''.
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Changed line(s) 416,417 (click to see context) from:
'''Troy:''' [[BlatantLies … Me too.]]
* BrutalHonesty: Abed tends to deliver cutting analyses of people without any sort of sugary coat. It becomes a plot point in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E07AerodynamicsOfGender Aerodynamics of Gender]].”
* BrutalHonesty: Abed tends to deliver cutting analyses of people without any sort of sugary coat. It becomes a plot point in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E07AerodynamicsOfGender Aerodynamics of Gender]].”
to:
* BrutalHonesty: Abed tends to deliver cutting analyses of people without any sort of sugary coat. It becomes a plot point in
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* CatchPhrase: (points) “Cool. (beat) Coolcoolcool.”
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* CatchPhrase: (points) “Cool."Cool. (beat) Coolcoolcool.”"
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Changed line(s) 400 (click to see context) from:
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with)The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
to:
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with)The with. The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
Changed line(s) 735 (click to see context) from:
--->'''Troy:''' (''reading'') “Hello during a random dessert, the month and day of which coincide numerically with your expulsion from a uterus.” You guys, I ''[[BlatantLies never]]'' [[BlatantLies cry, but …]]
to:
--->'''Troy:''' (''reading'') “Hello during a random dessert, the month and day of which coincide numerically with your expulsion from a uterus.” ” You guys, I ''[[BlatantLies never]]'' [[BlatantLies cry, but …]]
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Abed did become distressed when at daylights saving-but that was the timeline when he was not taking well of getting kicked out of Greendale the Greendale seven said that Abed wasn\'t acting out more so lately and that was the first memory there told him otherwise Abed is fine with daylight savings, also he actually said yeah not giving a nod.
Changed line(s) 400 (click to see context) from:
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with or changing the clocks for daylight savings. The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
to:
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with or changing the clocks for daylight savings. The with)The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
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'''Abed:''' (nods)
to:
'''Abed:''' (nods)Yeah.
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!!The Study Group (AKA “[[FiveManBand The]] [[EnsembleCast Greendale]] [[TrueCompanions Seven]]”).
to:
!!The Study Group (AKA “[[FiveManBand "[[FiveManBand The]] [[EnsembleCast Greendale]] [[TrueCompanions Seven]]”).
Seven]]").
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Changed line(s) 652 (click to see context) from:
* ThePollyanna: This trope could just as easily be called ‘The Annie’.
to:
* ThePollyanna: This trope could just as easily be called ‘The Annie’. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Jeff, who actually calls her "Pollyanna" at one point.
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Changed line(s) 605 (click to see context) from:
* BewareTheNiceOnes: As "[[Recap/CommunityS1E20TheScienceOfIllusion The Science of Illusion]]", "Anthropology 101", "Accounting For Lawyers" and "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" demonstrate, irking Annie Edison is not recommended. She can ge... aggressive.
to:
* BewareTheNiceOnes: As "[[Recap/CommunityS1E20TheScienceOfIllusion The Science of Illusion]]", "Anthropology 101", "Accounting For Lawyers" and "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" demonstrate, irking Annie Edison is not recommended. She can ge...get... aggressive.
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Changed line(s) 44,47 (click to see context) from:
Played by Joel [=McHale=].
A charming but manipulative and AmoralAttorney who was forced to attend Greendale upon the discovery that his college credentials were forged. Responsible for the formation of the group as the inadvertent result of a plot to seduce Britta, he tends to act as the leader.
A charming but manipulative and AmoralAttorney who was forced to attend Greendale upon the discovery that his college credentials were forged. Responsible for the formation of the group as the inadvertent result of a plot to seduce Britta, he tends to act as the leader.
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Changed line(s) 205,209 (click to see context) from:
Played by GillianJacobs.
[[GranolaGirl A passionate but inept political activist]], [[StrawFeminist feminist]], anarchist cat owner and psychology student, who, although generally well meaning, tends to eagerly latch on to particular causes with more enthusiasm (and [[SoapboxSadie obnoxious self-righteousness]]) than ability.
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Changed line(s) 310,313 (click to see context) from:
Played by Creator/ChevyChase.
The oldest member of the study group; a local curmudgeon and a wealthy but lonely tycoon who attends Greendale primarily to find company and give himself something to do. [[SmallNameBigEgo Not nearly as smart or popular as he thinks]], he tends to act inappropriately and thus come across as more-or-less inadvertently racist, sexist and buffoonish.
The oldest member of the study group; a local curmudgeon and a wealthy but lonely tycoon who attends Greendale primarily to find company and give himself something to do. [[SmallNameBigEgo Not nearly as smart or popular as he thinks]], he tends to act inappropriately and thus come across as more-or-less inadvertently racist, sexist and buffoonish.
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Changed line(s) 403,406 (click to see context) from:
Played by Danny Pudi.
A media-aware and pop-culture-obsessed film student who is either [[AmbiguousDisorder suffering from an unspecific personality disorder]] or is just [[CloudCuckoolander very eccentric]]. He tends to view the world around him [[GenreSavvy as if he and his friends were the main characters in a weekly television sitcom about a group of oddball students]]. As such, he tends to make [[LampshadeHanging frequent references, comparisons]] [[InvokedTrope and ‘homages’]] to various TV shows and movies. Legend has it that Abed himself wrote the entirety of tvtropes.com. Only two people have ever seen this website: you and Abed.
A media-aware and pop-culture-obsessed film student who is either [[AmbiguousDisorder suffering from an unspecific personality disorder]] or is just [[CloudCuckoolander very eccentric]]. He tends to view the world around him [[GenreSavvy as if he and his friends were the main characters in a weekly television sitcom about a group of oddball students]]. As such, he tends to make [[LampshadeHanging frequent references, comparisons]] [[InvokedTrope and ‘homages’]] to various TV shows and movies. Legend has it that Abed himself wrote the entirety of tvtropes.com. Only two people have ever seen this website: you and Abed.
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Changed line(s) 527,530 (click to see context) from:
Played by Yvette Nicole Brown.
A divorced housewife and mother who started attending business classes at the school following her divorce. [[TheFundamentalist A devout Christian]], she tends to see herself as [[TeamMom the group’s moral and spiritual compass and conscience]]—whether the group wants her to or not.
A divorced housewife and mother who started attending business classes at the school following her divorce. [[TheFundamentalist A devout Christian]], she tends to see herself as [[TeamMom the group’s moral and spiritual compass and conscience]]—whether the group wants her to or not.
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Played by Creator/AlisonBrie.
An insecure and neurotic [[TheSmartGirl overachiever]] attending Greendale following an addiction to prescription medication which ruined her previously flawless high-school record. [[BrainyBrunette Intelligent and driven]], she’s usually perky and cheerful but tends to get tightly-wound and uptight when things fail to go to plan or when matters of grades or academic achievement arise.
An insecure and neurotic [[TheSmartGirl overachiever]] attending Greendale following an addiction to prescription medication which ruined her previously flawless high-school record. [[BrainyBrunette Intelligent and driven]], she’s usually perky and cheerful but tends to get tightly-wound and uptight when things fail to go to plan or when matters of grades or academic achievement arise.
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Played by [[Music/ChildishGambino Donald Glover]].
A charismatic but [[TheDitz not-incredibly-intelligent high-school]] football star and [[JerkJock jock]]. Was previously high-school classmates with Annie, and is Abed’s best friend.
A charismatic but [[TheDitz not-incredibly-intelligent high-school]] football star and [[JerkJock jock]]. Was previously high-school classmates with Annie, and is Abed’s best friend.
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The seven main characters of the series; a diverse group of outcasts who met after forming a study group for their community college Spanish class.
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The seven original main characters of the series; ''Series/{{Community}}''; a diverse group of outcasts who met after forming a study group for their community college Spanish class.
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** Played enormously straight in “Remedial Chaos Theory”, though he’s obviously forcing it.
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** Played enormously straight in “Remedial “Remedial Chaos Theory”, though he’s obviously forcing it.
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The seven main characters of the series; a diverse group of outcasts who met after forming a study group for their community college Spanish class.
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!!The Study Group (AKA “[[FiveManBand The]] [[EnsembleCast Greendale]] [[TrueCompanions Seven]]”).
[[folder: '''As a Whole''']]
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: All the girls have this in spades. It’s often played with, however:
** Shirley is devoted to Andre who, after we meet him, is consistently depicted as an otherwise decent man who made a mistake and is trying his best to make up for it;
** Annie’s crush on Jeff is often demonstrated to be unhealthy, or at the very least ill-advised, for both of them and she herself acknowledges that it's largely due to issues she has around loneliness and being a bit of a ControlFreak who finds the idea of a man completely changing his identity for her appealing;
** Britta’s thing for jerks and weirdos is often deconstructed as being the result of deep-seated self-esteem issues and self-loathing on her part, prompting her to throw herself into disastrous relationships with damaged goods as a subconscious way of validating her own lack of self-worth.
* BadassCrew: They have, among other things, survived through hellish days-long paintball tournaments, beat up a school bully gang, started a school riot, and [[spoiler:rescued their dean]] with an elaborate heist.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: All of them have their quirks and attitude, but nonetheless get their job(s) well-done.
* FiveManBand:
** TheLeader: Jeff
** TheLancer: Britta
** TheSmartGuy: Abed
** TheBigGuy: Troy
** TheChick: Annie
** TeamMom: Shirley
** [[TagalongKid Tagalong Old Guy]][=/=]TokenEvilTeammate: Pierce
* DysfunctionJunction: They consider each other their true family because their home lives suck so much.
* FiveTokenBand: They are of different ages, races, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds, and it’s often lampshaded. It's possible this was invoked seeing as [[MetaGuy Abed]] was the one that gathered them together.
* TheGenerationGap: A fundamental dynamic of the group, as they're all of different ages. It's most obvious between Pierce (Baby Boomer) and the rest of the group (Generation X and younger), but there are generational conflicts between Shirley, Jeff and Britta on one side and Troy, Abed and Annie on the other as well.
* TheHecateSisters: Britta (the crone), Annie (the maiden) and Shirley (the matron/mother).
* [[ItsAllAboutMe It’s All About Us]]: Other students often complain that everything seems to revolve around the study group.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Jeff is the most obvious example, but all of them could be considered as this.
* TheNotableNumeral: Known in-universe as “The Greendale Seven”. (The name usually comes up in unflattering contexts.)
* NotSoAboveItAll: The entire group seems to look down on Greendale's Crazy antics but tend to cause most of them. Specifically, Jeff, Britta, Shirley, Annie and Pierce try to seem mature but often fall to the level of Abed or Troy
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits
* TeachersPet: They are the Dean’s favorite students—roles they emphatically did not seek out.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: At their worst.
* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Jeff (lord), Troy (hunter), Pierce (prophet).
* TheThreeFacesOfEve: Britta (seductress), Annie (child) and Shirley (wife).
* TrueCompanions
* VitriolicBestBuds: Shirley and Annie have become more competitive of each other by season 4.
** All of them could be said to be this with each other to some degree.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Jeff Winger]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/community_jeffwinger_4508.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:Why are people trying to teach me things at a school that has an express tuition aisle?]]
Played by Joel [=McHale=].
A charming but manipulative and AmoralAttorney who was forced to attend Greendale upon the discovery that his college credentials were forged. Responsible for the formation of the group as the inadvertent result of a plot to seduce Britta, he tends to act as the leader.
* AbusiveParents: In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E08HomeEconomics Home Economics]],” Jeff makes a throwaway reference to having a [[AlcoholicParent drunken]] and abusive dad when explaining how TV makes an excellent parent.
* ActorAllusion: Characters will often mock Jeff by calling him Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest is [=McHale’s=] RealLife SitcomArchNemesis.
* ActorSharedBackground: Jeff lived in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} in his youth, as did Joel [=McHale=].
* AesopAmnesia: He seems to have to learn and relearn that he either needs to start treating his friends better and/or deal with the fact that he’s at Greendale and stop acting so high-and-mighty about everything very frequently.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E09ConspiracyTheoriesAndInteriorDesign Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design]]”:
--->'''Jeff:''' He doesn’t like fake courses, well, he’s about to get a real lesson on the fact that Jeff Winger ''never learns''.
** “[[Recap/CommunityS3E01Biology101 Biology 101]]” seems to suggest he has finally learned how much he needs his friends (at least subconsciously) just as they are no longer reliant on him, and “[[Recap/CommunityS3E22IntroductionToFinality Introduction to Finality]]” basically confirms that he’s abandoned his former self-serving attitude.
* AmoralAttorney: His {{backstory}}.
* TheAntiNihilist: His speech at the end of the season 3 finale definitely has shades of this, though considering his Aesop Amnesia mentioned above, God only knows how far into season 4 he’ll go without brushing off helping the rest of the study group.
** His most disrespectful moment in the whole season comes in the [[Recap/CommunityS4E13AdvancedIntroductionToFinality finale]], when he '''''begs''''' for a lavish graduation ceremony.
* [[spoiler: ApatheticTeacher: In "Introduction to Teaching", though he gets better.]]
* AttentionWhore: PlayedForDrama. He faked appendicitis in seventh grade so that people would worry about him (22 years later he keeps the cards he received under the bed to prove that somebody once cared for him.) Also see ItsAllAboutMe below.
* AuthorAvatar: According to WordOfGod, Jeff is based on a younger, more self-absorbed version of the show’s creator Creator/DanHarmon.
* AxCrazy: In “Biology 101” when he gets kicked out from the group he loses it and uses an actual axe to destroy their table.
* BatmanGambit: Manages to pull them off on a number of occasions (see “[[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare Modern Warfare]]”, “Introduction to Finality”, “[[Recap/CommunityS3E20DigitalEstatePlanning Digital Estate Planning]]”).
* BavarianFireDrill: A key part of his MO. See the bit about “board-certified Spanish tutor” above.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Jeff and ''everyone''.
** Lampshaded almost word-for-word in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E21ParadigmsOfHumanMemory Paradigms of Human Memory]]”. They’ve been reading the trope pages again, haven’t they?
*** None of that chemistry is going Shirley’s way though, at least until “[[Recap/CommunityS3E09FoosballAndNocturnalVigilantism Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism]]”.
* BerserkButton:
** Don’t play mind games with Jeff when it comes to his long-lost father.
--->'''Jeff:''' If you’re lying to me, if my father isn’t coming, if a car pulls up and anyone other than my father steps out, say an actor or you in a wig, if you pull any ''[[Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff Ferris Bueller]]'', ''[[Film/TheParentTrap Parent Trap]]'', ''Series/ThreesCompany'', ''[[Film/FXMurderByIllusion F/X]]'', ''[=F/X=]2: the Deadly Art of Illusion'' bull-(bleep) I will beat you. And there will be [[AmusingInjuries nothing madcap or wacky about it]].
*** And he later makes good on his promise, chasing down the car Pierce is in, and dragging him out before proceeding to [[UnstoppableRage beat him until the other study group members try and pull him off]].
** Of course, Jeff has also been known to fake a BerserkButton, just to get out of a difficult conversation by having an excuse to storm off.
** Picking on Annie (especially if you’re outside the study group) also seems to be a BerserkButton for Jeff (although it’s inconsistently played).
*** As mentioned below under BullyHunter, he tends to confront bullies regardless of who they're picking on (although he usually frames it as confronting them for being obnoxious and irritating).
* BetterAsFriends[=/=]FriendsWithBenefits: Jeff and Britta’s relationship has zigzagged between the two; despite some romantic tension in season one, they appeared to have decided that they are BetterAsFriends—except it was revealed in “Paradigms of Human Memory” that they’d still been hooking up on occasion. The end of that episode, however, saw them apparently decide to call that quits as well, and it seems that they’re now just platonic friends.
* BettyAndVeronica: The Archie for Britta's Betty and Professor Slater's Veronica in the beginning.
** Later the Archie for Britta's Veronica and Annie's Betty.
** The Veronica to Troy's Betty for Britta's Archie.
* BlatantLies: The other key part of his MO.
* BreakTheHaughty: Much of Jeff’s character arc basically involves getting him down from his high horse by any means necessary, usually through a combination of humiliation. {{Deconstruction}} and good old-fashioned CharacterDevelopment.
* BrilliantButLazy: Played with for Jeff; he’s clearly quite clever, he’s ''very'' lazy, but whenever he tries to coast on this, things usually go wrong for him.
-->'''Jeff:''' Well, the funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work.
* BrokenAce
* BullyHunter: Jeff’s a curious example; on the surface, he seems thoroughly reluctant to involve himself in anything outside his own self-involved little bubble, and isn’t adverse to letting rip with the odd snide and cutting comment himself, yet he consistently appears unwilling and/or unable to let bullying go unchallenged. Pretty much every time a bully/group of bullies has appeared, even if the victim isn’t one of his friends Jeff’s more often than not ended up confronting them; he’ll usually frame it as confronting them for being a loud, obnoxious and irritating dickhead rather than a bully, but nevertheless. In “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism” we learn Jeff himself was a victim of bullying as a child, which might explain this.
* CallingTheOldManOut: To both his own and Pierce’s father.
* TheCasanova: Especially noticeable in the first half of season 1, somewhat tuned down afterwards.
** SlutShaming: Gets a lot of flak from the rest of the group for his womanizing tendencies.
* CatchPhrase: “But here’s the thing.” Usually said when he’s endeavoring to be the voice of reason.
* CelebrityResemblance: Other people note his resemblance to a) Ryan Seacrest and b) Thoraxis, an ''InspectorSpacetime'' villain.
* CharacterDevelopment[=/=]TookALevelInKindness: In the four years he’s attended Greendale and hung around the study group, it has become increasingly clear that Jeff has come a long way from the almost completely self-absorbed and amoral person he was at the beginning of the series.
** Just one example of how far he has travelled: the first “Winger Speech” he gives in the [[Recap/CommunityS1E01Pilot pilot episode]] shows that he is a moral relativist, that there is no such thing as truth. By the end of the third season he has renounced that belief and become a moral absolutist stating that “the truth is helping others is good”.
* TheCharmer
* ChewbaccaDefense[=/=]CourtroomAntic: What his arsenal of lawyer tricks consists of.
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: A very, ''very'' reluctant (and occasionally quite petty) version of the trope.
* CompetitionFreak: He just '''has''' to be the best at everything he participates in. This nearly drives him crazy when he meets [[TheAce Rich]] at the pottery class.
* [[CoolBigSis Cool Big Bro]]: He steps into the role for the younger members of the study group. An early example would be during TheTag when he walks in on a krumping session between Troy and Abed and soon joins them.
* CoolShades: Which he will usually combine with a leather jacket and a well-timed GlassesPull for maximum effect.
* [[MommyIssues Daddy Issues]]
** DisappearedDad: Apparently his father is a conman who “couldn’t leave a trail if he wanted to.”
* TheCynic: Jeff is practically the embodiment of an extremely cynical and jaded person.
* TheDandy: His preoccupation with his clothes and his ‘crispy’ hair is a RunningGag.
* DeadpanSnarker
* [[DefrostingIceQueen Defrosting Ice King]]
* DependingOnTheWriter: How much of a prick he can be.
* {{Dismotivation}}: Played with; Jeff wants to get his degree, get out of Greendale and back into his cushy high-powered lawyer lifestyle, but is incredibly lazy, used to coasting on his wits and charm, and sees doing any more than the bare minimum amount of effort required to get by, be it in getting his degree or doing anything for his friends, as a personal failure. Naturally, he often falls into the trap of doing more to actually avoid doing anything (and consequently bringing on more trouble and strife to himself as a result) than would be necessary if he just sucked it up and put an honest effort in.
* TheDitherer: Played with; on the surface, Jeff is confident, charismatic and in-control, which is why everyone treats him as TheLeader, but when you look closer it’s increasingly clear that while he can talk a good game he’s never really committed to anything meaningful in his life before the study group and always takes what he thinks/assumes is the easy option out of a situation because it saves him from having to risk anything or actually take a stand about something.
* TheDulcineaEffect: Jeff decides he had a crush on Britta in the very first episode and spends the rest of the season pursuing her [[spoiler:until they hook up in the semi-finale.]]
* EmbarrassingNickname: “Tinkle Town”, when he was a kid.
** Some of his nicknames at Greendale (Forehead, Mr. Insecure, Seacrest) aren’t particularly flattering either.
* EvenTheGuysWantHim
* FauxFluency: Pretending to be a [[BavarianFireDrill “board-certified Spanish tutor”]] from the very first episode. This is lampshaded by Annie: “What board certifies a tutor?”
* FencePainting: Yet ''another'' part of his MO, most notable in [[Recap/CommunityS3E14PillowsAndBlankets “Pillows and Blankets”]].
* ForeheadOfDoom: This feature has been brought up several times when insulting him.
-->'''Jeff:''' My forehead's not ''that'' big?\\
''[The others make non-committal noises]''\\
'''Troy:''' It’s not small.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Phlegmatic
* FreezeFrameBonus: In [[Recap/CommunityS2E02AccountingForLawyers “Accounting for Lawyers”]], the email [[spoiler:Alan]] sent to the bar association that got Jeff disbarred in the first place reveals his middle name is Tobias.
* FreudianExcuse: Jeff drastically changed his image and attitude after a brutal lashing at foosball—a loss so bad that young Jeff actually wet himself—by a bully [[spoiler:who turns out to be Shirley]] when he was 10 years old.
** His parents’ divorce led to him choosing his [[AmoralAttorney future line of work]] because he wanted to be unafflicted by emotional vulnerabilities. His problems with commitment most likely stem from the same root.
* GentleGiant: When he’s not being a Jerkass.
* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Inverted; Jeff, a self-centred and emotionally closed-off {{Jerkass}}, seems to be good at seducing women when he wants to, but if Britta (the only member of the study group who has actually had sex with him) is to be believed, he's not actually very good in bed.
* HardWorkHardlyWorks: Averted (despite his best efforts) and {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d.
-->'''Jeff:''' The funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without having to do any work.
** Often falls into the trap of LaboriousLaziness despite recognizing and lampshading this tendency of his (“I’m always willing to go the extra mile to avoid doing something”).
* TheHero
** TheLeader: A mixture of a Type IV and Type II, though the Type II fades in and out at times.
** GuileHero
** DecoyProtagonist: His role as the lone viewpoint character lasts maybe halfway into the first season and rapidly diminishes from there.
*** Season 3 presents a bit of a {{Deconstruction}} of him; his more [[ToxicFriendInfluence negative traits, influences and effects]] on the group were increasingly the focus of the plots surrounding him, and the group as a whole generally seemed to be increasingly resistant to/intolerant of his usual tactics and behaviours. He’s also been revealed to be ''very'' messed up.
* HiddenDepths: It’s frequently made clear that beneath the smooth, confidently amoral charmer, there’s basically a wounded and lonely ten-year-old trying to build a shell around himself. To a lesser degree, despite his surface disdain for the geek culture exemplified by Troy and Abed he’s very good at spotting Abed’s pop culture references and, according to “Home Economics”, apparently collected ''Spider-Man'' comics, and is shown to both own (in Comparative Religion) and play (in Intro to Political Science) guitar . A lot of his vanity also stems from deep-seated body image issues, and he once admitted that he was afraid of being fat because he believed that if he was fat no one would like him.
* {{Hipster}}: Jeff tends to occupy the ‘vain, self-centered and obsessed with being the coolest-yet-most-aloof person in the room’ part of the stereotype.
-->'''Jeff:''' [[HypocriticalHumor Hipster! Come on, would a hipster wear $300 jeans from Italy?]]
* HotGuysAreBastards: He’s getting (a bit) better, but he still has a tendency to use his looks as an excuse for being a jerk.
* {{Hypocrite}}: His aloof sense of smug superiority towards Greendale and almost everyone around him can take on this edge when you remember that he's a failed lawyer who's reduced to having to attend a crummy community college in order to qualify for the degrees he falsified; objectively speaking, he's just as much a loser as everyone around him that he looks down on.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: It’s often suggested that underneath his confidence, charm and superior attitudes to his friends and Greendale in general, Jeff has some very deep-seated self-esteem issues.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Jeff clearly thinks he’s the centre of the universe and that everything revolves around him, and can get very edgy when someone suggests otherwise.
* {{Jerkass}}: His default setting. While the study group has enabled him to gradually develop and display a heart of gold, he originally wasn’t very nice at all, and can occasionally regress.
** JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Almost on every episode he is in when he has to rescue the group from their hijinks. Lampshaded by Britta in “Modern Warfare”. In fact, it can be argued that this trope is Reconstructed with Jeff. He seems to have fully evolved (if that can be considered character evolution) into a spot-on depiction of this trope by the end of season 3.
*** In season 3 we are shown literally what is in his heart: [[ShipTease Annie]], [[AllMenArePerverts Annie’s breasts]], an opulent house, liquor, expensive cars, gambling, his cell phone, [[PetTheDog a golden retriever]], and a Hollywood actress. He settles on having a drink.
* LaboriousLaziness: He works surprisingly hard at being lazy.
* LikeFatherLikeSon: There are quite a few similarities between Jeff and his father (both are emotionally guarded/stunted, narcissistic, charismatic, and both have run their share of cons).
* LoonyFriendsImproveYourPersonality: Although it’s played with, in that it’s gradually revealed that as much as he might try to deny or hide it, he’s just as loony as the rest of them in many ways.
* ManipulativeBastard: He’s getting much worse at this over time, due to CharacterDevelopment. His skills started failing him right around when he came to Greendale.
* MeaningfulName: His last name is Winger, and he’s spent his adult life, well, [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught winging]] [[HardWorkHardlyWorks it]].
* MementoMacGuffin: Jeff has kept his father’s [[spoiler:boxing gloves]].
* MommyIssues: His mother praised him too much and now he has trouble accepting failure.
* TheMovieBuff: Nowhere near Abed, of course, but he does pick on most of Abed’s references and displays a higher than average amount of movie knowledge. {{Justified|Trope}} in that he was practically raised by TV.
* MrFanservice:
** He has quite a few {{Shirtless Scene}}s.
*** And then [[Recap/CommunityS1E17PhysicalEducation there’s the pool match]] …
** He’s actually very much aware of his status as this.
-->“I discovered a new back muscle to work out. Ladies, you’ll thank me come tank top season.”
** Deconstructed however; he's very handsome and knows it, but his vanity and self-centredness mean that, if Britta is to be believed, he's not actually that great as a sexual partner.
* {{Narcissist}}: Often discussed in-universe. Thankfully, his experiences at Greendale improve him somewhat.
--> "I'm Jeff Winger, and, if I had my choice, I would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with."
* NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught: He runs basically the entire spectrum of amorality tropes.
** Lampshaded by Jeff in “Digital Estate Planning” when Gilbert cheats.
--->''You’re cheating! Which I have no problem with, except you’re getting caught, and that’s not cool!''
* NotSoAboveItAll: He may think of himself as the OnlySaneMan, but in reality he’s had his share of crazy moments too and will occasionally join in with Troy and Abed’s antics.
* NotSoDifferent: It’s often made clear that Jeff and Pierce are not quite so different as Jeff would like to believe, and that Pierce is essentially what a future version of Jeff will look like if he doesn’t improve his ways and character.
* OlderThanTheyLook: It's revealed in "G.I. Jeff" that [[spoiler:he's 40 as of that episode.]]
* OneHeadTaller: At 6’4”, [[HugeGuyTinyGirl he towers over Annie and Britta]]. And the rest of the study group (save Pierce).
* OnlySaneMan: Jeff likes to think and act like he’s this, and it’s initially played more-or-less straight, but it’s gradually subverted over the course of the series when it becomes apparent that he’s in many ways more messed up than any of his wackier friends.
* PermaStubble: In season 3 and onward, although he does spend the occasional episode clean-shaven.
* PhysicalScarsPsychologicalScars: When recounting the ways he was traumatized by his father leaving the family, Jeff recounts an incident when he cut himself with scissors in order to fake appendicitis. (See AttentionWhore above.)
* ThePreciousPreciousCar: His Lexus.
* PrecisionFStrike: Jeff is the only character to swear (censored, of course) in the two documentary episodes.
-->'''Jeff''': What are you doing?
-->'''Abed''': Shooting a documentary on Changnesia.
-->'''Jeff''': Oh, for fuck's sake!
* TheReveal: The person he’s constantly texting is [[spoiler:nobody]].
* SanitySlippage: Caused by Rich’s perfection and hearing Pierce’s news about his father visiting him.
* SecretRelationship: With Prof. Slater in Season 1 and with Britta in Season 2.
* SecularHero: [[Recap/CommunityS1E12ComparativeReligion He’s agnostic]], much to the collective derision of the study group.[[note]]Everyone else has definitively made up their minds about whatever gods may or may not exist: Annie is Jewish, Abed is Muslim, Shirley is Christian (specifically Baptist), Troy's a Jehovah’s Witness, Britta's an atheist, and Pierce belongs to a cult he calls “Reformed Neo-Buddhism”.[[/note]]
* SelectiveObliviousness: When it comes to his treatment of Pierce. In his arguments with Annie about him, Jeff frequently takes the position that Pierce is just fundamentally a {{Jerkass}}, whereas Annie makes the case that it's only because people are always treating him poorly that he acts out. It is perhaps worth noting that out of the study group, Jeff is the most unrepentantly snide, mean-spirited and dismissive of Pierce and treats him poorly more frequently than the others, thus potentially explaining why he might not want to consider the possibility that it's his own treatment of Pierce that has caused most of the problems.
* SillyRabbitCynicismIsForLosers: Learning this is essentially his character arc; Jeff's cynical and self-serving outlook on life has ultimately left him lonely, miserable, riddled with psychological issues and as big a failure as anyone else at Greendale no matter how much he might try to deny it.
* ShoutOut: Dan Harmon has said that Winger is named for (and his personality modeled after) John Winger of ''Film/{{Stripes}}''.
* SmugSmiler: One of his default expressions is a incredibly self-satisfied smirk.
* SoreLoser: He basically storms off in a huff in "A Fistful of Paintballs" [[spoiler: when he's the first person to get eliminated in the final battle.]]
* StepfordSnarker: Feigns cynicism and indifference in order to hide his feelings.
* StopHavingFunGuy: In general, his rather snide and cooler-than-thou attitude and efforts to demonstrate aloof and ironic detachment at all times can sometimes mean that he can ruin the fun a bit (alternatively, he can seem to have it most at the expense of someone else). Seems especially the case in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]]” [[spoiler:where the timeline resulting in him going to get the pizza is ultimately the one were everyone ends up having the most fun]].
* TallDarkAndSnarky
* TeamDad: Reluctantly. It also adds a level of Electra complex to his flirtation with Annie, which Jeff finds somewhat disturbing.
** PapaWolf: Despite being rude and dismissive towards his friends on a regular basis, he’s very protective of them whenever things get ugly or dangerous.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: His leadership isn’t always for the best, and he can be a rather negative force in the group and toward his friends at times.
* UnknownRival: He instantly assumes Rich is just pretending to be nice and drives himself crazy trying to prove it, insisting that he doesn’t care the whole time. Then there’s the Black Rider, who has no idea why this guy with the big forehead is obsessed with being more handsome than him.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Not a complete jerk, but leans towards the {{Jerkass}} side of DeadpanSnarker, and most of his problems are his own fault. Pointed out in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E01Anthropology101 Anthropology 101]]”:
-->'''Abed:''' I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense; it has structure, logic, rules, and likable leading men. In life, we have this. We have you.
* WhiteGuilt: After Jeff and Troy find out their new friend Joshua was a blatant racist, Jeff offers to buy Troy frozen yogurt as his white guilt was driving him nuts.
* WhiteMaleLead: Out of two black people, an Arabic guy, an Asian guy, and three women on the cover, the main character ends up being the white guy. Although the series has become a lot more of an ensemble piece over time.
** To be fair to the show, Joel [=McHale=] was the cast member with the most TV credits to his name (save for Chevy Chase, who—not being the main character at all—was given the AndStarring credit).
* WorthlessForeignDegree: The reason Jeff is in community college is that [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfjYaivKGJ8 his Bachelor’s degree is one of these]]. Formerly provided the page quote for this trope.
-->'''Duncan:''' I thought you had a Bachelor’s from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University Columbia]].\\
'''Jeff:''' Well, now I have to get one from America.
%%
%% * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
%% Stop editing this trope. Duncan is referring to Columbia (the university), not to Colombia (the country). The joke is that Jeff actually has a Worthless Foreign Degree from ColOmbia, but that Duncan thought it was from ColUmbia. It is a pun using Columbia and Colombia as homophones. One is a highly regarded college in New York; the other is a nation in South America.
%% * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
%%
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Britta Perry]]
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Screen_shot_2011-05-29_at_2_41_02_PM_6765.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:300:This may shock you, but I come from a long line of wives and mothers.]]
Played by GillianJacobs.
[[GranolaGirl A passionate but inept political activist]], [[StrawFeminist feminist]], anarchist cat owner and psychology student, who, although generally well meaning, tends to eagerly latch on to particular causes with more enthusiasm (and [[SoapboxSadie obnoxious self-righteousness]]) than ability.
* ActorAllusion: Jeff and Chang laughing about Cherry Daiquiri, and then talking to Britta. (Gillian Jacobs played Cherry Daiquiri in the movie version of ''Literature/{{Choke}}''.)
* {{Adorkable}}: Gillian Jacobs describes Britta (and herself) with this exact word in one of the season 3 commentaries.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: She seems to have quite the thing for damaged goods, jerks and weirdos; subject to a process of {{Deconstruction}} in that it’s made clear that this is due to severe self-esteem issues on her part, and she initiates these relationships as a self-destructive way of validating her own lack of self-worth.
-->'''Troy:''' What don’t you get about this? Britta likes guys who are mean to her. She doesn’t like herself.
* BattleCry: “Britta for the win!”
* BerserkButton: Britta likes boys, and she DOESN’T like when they’re mean to her, and she DOESN’T like when they stop kissing her and start kissing one of her friends.
* BetterAsFriends: With Jeff, as mentioned above.
** [[spoiler:And later with Troy.]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Professor Slater's Veronica for Jeff's Archie in the beginning.
** Later becomes the Veronica to Annie's Betty also for Jeff's Archie.
** The Archie for Jeff's Veronica and Troy's Betty.
* BookDumb[=/=]GeniusDitz: Of a sort, at least; while her knowledge of psychological theory is shown to be quite lacking and her over-eagerness to apply this flawed knowledge makes her the subject of derision, she is often shown to actually be quite insightful about pinpointing people’s issues and what they should do to address them. Unfortunately, because her flawed theoretical knowledge makes her sound like an idiot, people (particularly Jeff) are often inclined to dismiss her advice out of hand when perhaps they shouldn’t.
* BreakTheHaughty: Like Jeff, Britta tends to have a rather high opinion of herself. Again like Jeff, many of the plots involving her tend to involve knocking her off her high horse as humiliatingly as possible.
* ButtMonkey: If it’s not Pierce, it’s Britta. Per Troy, she’s the AT&T of people.
* BuffySpeak
* TheCastShowoff: She shows off her dancing skills in [[Recap/CommunityS1E14InterpretiveDance Interpretive Dance]].
* CatchPhrase: “BRITTA FOR THE WIN!” and “Duh doy!”
** “I ''lived'' in UsefulNotes/{{New York|City}}.”
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In her earliest appearances, she was a much more intelligent, snarky, [[MarySue "perfect"]] woman who often deserved her "high horse" standing because of her moral or intellectual standing (although not always; the character was just as frequently exposed as being something of a {{hypocrite}} at times). By season 2, though, these aspects of her character were gone without a trace, and she had become the more chilled out (though occasionally a Liberal Strawman) version of her that persisted through the rest of the show. The standing explanation is that Gillian Jacobs greatly prefers to play oddball wacky characters over morally superior characters, and negotiated to make her character more "fun", at the expense of the character's dignity. This also contributed to her persistent status as the series ButtMonkey.
* CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority: Often exaggerated and PlayedForLaughs. Her [[Recap/CommunityS2E14AdvancedDungeonsAndDragons D&D moniker]] was even “Britta the Needlessly Defiant”.
* TheCynic: While not quite on Jeff's levels, she has a rather pestimistic view toward many things.
* DeadpanSnarker: Almost as snarky as Jeff.
* TheDitherer: Played with, but in a more straightforward fashion than Jeff: like him, on the surface she seems committed to her various causes and has a very forceful, loud personality, but it quickly becomes apparent that she’s not nearly as dedicated as she wants other people to believe she is, and most of her loudness is bluster designed to conceal the fact that she can’t really manage to get things together and take responsibility for her life.
* DoesNotLikeMen: A somewhat mild example; she definitely has and expresses some [[StrawFeminist rather unflattering]] views about the male gender as a whole, but it’s less that she hates men and can’t stand to be around them (indeed, she’s good friends with three of them [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and also knows Pierce]]), and more that her feminist views have managed to (erroneously) convince her that, as a woman, she’s inherently superior to them.
* DumbBlonde[=/=]TheDitz[=/=]BrainlessBeauty: [[CharacterizationMarchesOn Though she starts off as reasonably intelligent]], [[TookALevelInDumbass it fades over time]], and she falls significantly into this trope by season 3, to the point of becoming [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike birds of a feather]] with [[BookDumb Troy]].
* EruditeStoner
* EthicalSlut
* FormerTeenRebel: Used to be an activist who traveled the world and joined the Peace Corps before deciding to go BackToSchool, which explains her SoapboxSadie tendencies.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Melancholic
* FriendsWithBenefits: With Jeff in season 2.
* GiftedlyBad: As a photographer.
* GranolaGirl: She was clearly one before entering the show, but snarkiness has turned her into more of a StrawFeminist.
-->'''Britta:''' I’m a vegetarian.\\
'''Troy:''' [[SarcasmMode Wow. Shocker.]]
* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
* HellBentForLeather: Was once referred to as the girl with “the infinite supply of leather jackets”. The thread of Britta's hypocrisy is reflected in her attempt to look like a sexy bad ass in animal skins while professing proudly not to eat them. Eventually she undergoes a wardrobe makeover sans leather jackets symbolic of her being less hypocritical and perhaps less of a sexy bad-ass as well.
* HiddenDepths: Has a hidden talent for planning weddings. It upsets her as if that humiliated her as a feminist.
* {{Hipster}}: Like Jeff, much as she might try to deny it Britta is totally a hipster. In particular, she tends to occupy the ‘pretentious, smug and poorly informed left-winger’ aspect of the stereotype. And she’s apparently ''always'' been a hipster—for example, she deliberately tracked down [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes VHS bootlegs]] of ''[[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rebop_(TV_series) Rebop]]'' as a child.
* HollywoodAtheist
* HollywoodPsych: Despite her passion for her major, it’s pretty clear that her knowledge of psychology only ranges to this. This is done on purpose, to showcase how ignorant she is. [[{{Anvilicious}} And to remind viewers, yet again, how atrocious Greendale’s classes are.]]
* {{Hypocrite}}: Although the SoapboxSadie, [[TheDitz Ditz]] and GranolaGirl aspects of her character would be gradually heightened for comedy over time, hypocrisy has been an aspect of Britta’s character [[OlderThanTheyThink since the early days of the show]]—[[Recap/CommunityS1E02Spanish101 the second episode]] reveals that her championing of social justice causes is mainly for appearances and credibility points and she doesn’t really do anything towards them, and [[Recap/CommunityS1E05AdvancedCriminalLaw the fifth episode]] reveals that her trumpeting of honesty as being her big defining feature is a sham when [[spoiler:she admits to having cheated on a Spanish test]].
** Earlier '''''still''''', in the very first episode, Britta [[spoiler:conceals her smoking habit from Jeff until he catches her outside with a cigarette while running out to the football field]]. It’s especially funny because Jeff could easily have been the one to be found out in that scene.
** This is lampshaded in "[[Recap/CommunityS2E03ThePsychologyofLettingGo The Psychology of Letting Go]]", when Annie, having had to put up with an episode of snide self-righteousness from Britta about her efforts to appeal to guys, angrily points out that despite her posturing Britta obviously also cares about getting attention from men seeing as she wears stripper boots, eats celery and mustard for lunch and gets up "an hour early to ever so slightly curl [her] hair."
** As noted above, she proudly and smugly lauds her vegetarian practices over the other members of the study group while simultaneously owning "an infinite supply of leather jackets".
* HypocriticalHumor: Seeing as there’s a bit of a gulf between Britta’s beliefs and her actions, she tends to generate this kind of humor.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: Often when her obnoxious, SoapboxSadie façade is [[BreakTheHaughty broken down]], she reveals her vulnerable side, admitting she actually hates herself, even going as far as to compare herself unfavourably to cancer at one point. A lot of the things she does are to gain respect from others, especially the study group. In Season 3, she discovers a new method of trying to gain respect: touting the fact that she’s a psych major and (unsuccessfully) showing off her psych skills.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Britta tends towards being rather obnoxious, self-righteous and inept, but her heart is generally in the right place and it’s often made clear that she’d jump through fire for her friends.
* KindheartedCatLover: And her cats all seem to have an incredible range of illnesses and disabilities.
* KnowNothingKnowItAll: She presents herself as an experienced and enlightened woman-of-the-world, but isn’t nearly as well-informed as she believes herself to be or wants others to believe she is.
* TheLancer
* {{Malaproper}}: Has a tendency towards this; some examples are “edible complex” ([[OedipusComplex Oedipal Complex]]) and “rowboat cop” (''Franchise/RoboCop'').
* MeaningfulName: Britta is a rather brittle person, who puts on a tough, confident and self-impressed front but is really a rather unstable stew of neuroses and insecurities when you get past the surface. Pierce accidentally foreshadows this in the pilot by introducing her to Jeff ([[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment belatedly]]) as “Brittles”.
** Also, as Abed notes in "[[Recap/CommunityS1E21ContemporaryAmericanPoultry Contempoaray American Poultry]]", she [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brita compulsively filters herself]].
* MsFanservice: She has her moments.
* NoSocialSkills: Her reactions to certain situations tend to be inappropriate or just nonsensical. According to WordOfGod, this is why she plays a "malfunctioning robot" in "Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas".
* NotSoAboveItAll: It’s suggested a few times that, despite her StrawFeminist-like disdain for traditional women’s roles, gender binaries and their trappings (such as marriage) and her tendency to lord it over Shirley and Annie when they display interests that align to this, she’s not quite as detached from them as she likes to believe, most notably in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E11UrbanMatrimonyAndTheSandwichArts Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts]]”, she displays a surprising innate and instinctive talent for floral arrangement and wedding preparation.
* NotSoDifferent: With Shirley. Although they often come from different ends of the spectrum when it comes to their religious and political beliefs and often clash because of it, they’re more alike than they think—in particular, they both tend to get very self-righteous about their particular standards ([[HypocriticalHumor often without justification]]) and will often drive the other members of the group up the wall with their moralizing when they get up on their respective high horses.
** The first season onwards also makes it pretty clear that as much as she disdains Jeff for his superficial, selfish and self-centred nature, she is in many ways just as superficial, selfish and self-centered.
* ObliviousToLove: She was unaware of Troy’s crush on her for quite sometime.
* PersonAsVerb: InUniverse: To "Britta" something means to screw it up, usually by making a stupid mistake. Lampshaded in "Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps":
-->'''Jeff:''' You probably just Britta'd the test results.\\
'''Britta:''' Are people using my name as slang to mean "make a small mistake?"
** Deconstructed in "Herstory as Dance"; during his WhatTheHellHero speech to Jeff about his {{Jerkass}} behaviour to Britta, Pierce points out that Jeff persistently using a friend's name as a synonym for screwing up and failure is a good indicator that Jeff's actually a pretty crappy friend. Humbled by this, in his congratulatory text to Britta after the concert she organises goes well Jeff makes a point of saying that she "Britta'd the hell out of it".
* PhraseCatcher: "You’re the worst!"
* PlayingGertrude: Though not obscenely so. In the first episode (which originally aired on September 17, 2009) Abed tells Jeff that her 29th birthday is coming up in October. Gillian Jacobs ''did'' have her birthday—her ''27th'' birthday—on October 13, 2009.
* ProgressivelyPrettier: Britta was several steps up from ugly to begin with and whether or not it was intentional is unknown, but gets more and more beautiful as the show passes, reflecting how she put her life back on track at Greendale.
* PurelyAestheticGlasses
* [[spoiler:RapeAsBackstory: While it may not have been rape, it has been implied that she was molested by a man in a dinosaur costume when she was 11. With the way the show has spun it, it seems like it may also count as BlackComedyRape.]]
* ReallyGetsAround: At least, it’s frequently implied that she does.
* [[spoiler:RelationshipUpgrade: With Troy between Season 3 and 4.]]
* SecretRelationship: With Jeff in Season 2.
* SmugSmiler: She can look very, ''very'' smug when she gets self-righteous about something. [[SoapboxSadie Which is often.]]
* SoapboxSadie: Parodied; she will latch on to ''any'' excuse to jump onto her high horse about something, especially if the something in question is something that is no longer as radical or controversial as she thinks it is. This tends to lead to her making a fool of herself.
--> '''Annie:''' You're anti-wedding now?
--> '''Jeff:''' No, she's just pro-anti.
--> '''Britta:''' No to everything you both said!
* SoUnfunnyItsFunny: The kind of humor Britta usually provides.
* StraightMan: She has a reputation as a buzz-kill.
* StrawFeminist: It's frequently made clear that her understanding of feminism is flawed and that she mainly tends to use her feminist causes as a way of feeling superior over others.
* SugarAndIcePersonality
* TeamMom: Juggles this with Shirley. Britta tends to be the group’s “buzz-kill” and has become more concerned with their mental well-beings since becoming a Psych Major.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The tomboy to Annie’s girly girl.
* TookALevelInDumbass: Lampshaded by Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E18CourseListingUnavailable Course Listing Unavailable]]”:
-->'''Jeff:''' You seemed smarter than me when I met you.
** And again in "[[Recap/CommunityS5E01Repilot Repilot]]":
--->'''Jeff:''' Britta, when we met, you were an eclectic anarchist. How did you become the group's airhead?
--->'''Britta:''' (''confused'') Thank you?
* {{Tsundere}}: Her actions seems to imply she’s a Type B tsundere, especially towards Jeff.
* UnfortunateNames: “What is she, a water filter?” “Can you imagine living with that?”
** And she doesn’t even realize that.
* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: With Jeff.
* WeaknessTurnsHerOn: A self-admitted example. [[ShipTease She even falls for Troy]] when he makes up a story of being molested as a child.
* WomenAreWiser: None of the characters is a flawless human being, but she tries to act, invoke and otherwise claim this trope (particularly for herself) more than the others, which tends to lead to HypocriticalHumor when reality or her own character flaws trip her up and prove her wrong—usually immediately after. She does admit at one point that she doesn’t really consider herself to be so deep down, however, and her heart is generally in the right place even if there’s a gulf between her opinion of herself and the reality.
* YaoiFangirl
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Pierce Hawthorne]]
[[quoteright:287:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pierce-picture_329x494_8839.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:287:Streets ahead!]]
Played by Creator/ChevyChase.
The oldest member of the study group; a local curmudgeon and a wealthy but lonely tycoon who attends Greendale primarily to find company and give himself something to do. [[SmallNameBigEgo Not nearly as smart or popular as he thinks]], he tends to act inappropriately and thus come across as more-or-less inadvertently racist, sexist and buffoonish.
* AccidentalMisnaming: Pierce routinely mispronounces Abed’s name as “Ay-bed”.
* ActorAllusion: Pierce’s father's name is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Chase Cornelius]], and he lives on “Cranesworth Road”.
* AdamWesting: Up until the beginning of 2011 or so, Chevy Chase was absolutely notorious for being difficult to work with. He briefly turned it around, but Pierce’s status as the group’s in-universe [[TheScrappy Scrappy-Doo]] and general {{Jerkass}}ness can be seen as him essentially playing who he thinks he used to be.
** Alternatively, this could be seen as the producers of the show lampooning Chase, since several behind-the-scenes reports (most notably the feud between Chase and Dan Harmon, although the same reports in that case also suggested that Harmon himself wasn’t exactly blameless in the situation either) have suggested that Chase isn’t exactly the easiest person to work with or the most popular person on set.
*** And in November 2012, Chase formally severed his affiliation with ''Community'', requiring the writers to graduate Pierce from Greendale in the Season 4 finale.
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: An in-universe example; the characters themselves go backwards and forwards on whether Pierce is just an irredeemable {{Jerkass}} or whether it’s the fact that people treat him like a fool that makes him act out that way. Jeff usually takes the former interpretation, Annie the latter.
* AmbiguouslyGay: He drops a few hints here and there.
* AndStarring: With Chevy Chase.
* BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork: He considers himself the guy who does or says what everyone else wants, but isn’t willing, to.
* BerserkButton: A double subversion occurs in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E02AccountingForLawyers Accounting for Lawyers]]” when Pierce fails to guess another man’s BerserkButton, but in fact has just mentioned his own—his hair loss.
* BlackBestFriend: One thing that gets Pierce out of his suicidal funk is that he has “a young African-American friend” (namely, Troy).
* BondageIsBad: While he’s not evil, he is a DirtyOldMan, and the fact that he has a “secret gym” in his mansion only reinforces this image.
* BrickJoke: Upon season 5, we find out he actually knew (or paid a lot of money to) Levar Burton.
* ButtMonkey: If it’s not Britta, it is Pierce who typically serves this role within the study group, as lampshaded in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E22TheArtOfDiscourse The Art of Discourse]]”.
* TheCastShowoff: Performs a couple songs accompanying himself on keyboard.
* CatchPhrase: Tries to force “streets ahead” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E21ContemporaryAmericanPoultry Contemporary American Poultry]]”.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: By season 3 due to senility.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: So much. So very very much.
* ADateWithRosiePalms: [[spoiler:Doing too much of this is what ultimately kills him.]]
** [[spoiler: DeathByIrony]]: [[spoiler: The reason he did so much of it is because he left each member of the study group a cylinder of his frozen sperm in his will. After filling up all the cylinders, he died of dehydration.]]
* DependingOnTheWriter: He’s a relatively harmless bumbling man in some episodes, an unapologetic {{Jerkass}} in others.
* DirtyOldMan: To wit, after the CrackPairing on the [[Series/{{Community}} main page]]:
-->'''Pierce:''' ''(to everybody in the group)'' So, just to be clear, I don’t have a shot with any of you?\\
''(everybody shudders and walks away)''
* DisproportionateRetribution: A specialty of his.
** “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” takes this to epic levels.
** “[[Recap/CommunityS2E16IntermediateDocumentaryFilmmaking Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking]]” is all about his complicated revenge.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E17IntroToPoliticalScience Intro to Political Science]]” he got into the election for student body president just to publicly humiliate Vicki in every way imaginable for not lending him a pencil.
* TheDitz: A particularly nasty example.
** GeniusDitz: He’s actually a competent businessman and a skilled orator.
* DontYouDarePityMe: Pierce hates the thought of anyone pitying him for any reason. Unfortunately, he’s also so desperate for attention that rather than accept people’s pity, he’ll instead lash out in more negative ways to the point that pity ends up being the ''last'' thing anyone feels for him, even if he genuinely warrants it.
* DraftDodging: Fled to Canada to avoid fighting in the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar.
* DrivenByEnvy: On many occasions, when he feels left out of the group’s activities.
* DumbassHasAPoint: He shows [[IncrediblyLamePun piercing and penetrating insight]] every once in a while.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: '''Piercinald''' Anastasia Hawthorne.
* EmbarrassingMiddleName: Anastasia, according to “[[Recap/CommunityS3E06AdvancedGay Advanced Gay]]”.
* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: It’s revealed that he often talks to his mother about how he feels Jeff bullies him, and tells her he has a GirlfriendInCanada.
* ForTheEvulz
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Sanguine
* TheFriendNobodyLikes
* {{Flanderization}}: Into a massive racist. Combining with OutOfFocus as shown below and you get a character who now does little more than spout racist one-liners before shuffling out of focus again, which was reportedly one of the main reasons Chevy Chase was increasingly frustrated with and dismissive of the show.
* HiddenDepths: In [[Recap/CommunityS2E24ForAFewPaintballsMore the season 2 finale]]:
-->'''Pierce:''' You know I’ve been coming to this school for twelve years? I—I’ve never been friends with anyone here for more than a semester. Probably for the same reason I’ve been married seven times. I guess I assume eventually I’ll get rejected, so I, you know, test people, push them until they prove me right. It’s a sickness, I admit it. But, this place has always accepted me, sickness and all. This place accepted all of ''you''. Sickness and all. It’s worth thinking about.
* InnocentBigot: Regularly says things the other characters find offensive. [[RacistGrandma Generational]] [[FairForItsDay differences]] play a role.
* {{Jerkass}}: More and more.
** JerkWithAHeartOfGold: A ''very'' minor example; there are occasionally glimpses of someone more likeable, decent and sympathetic within Pierce, but they’re buried almost impenetrably deep within a crust and outer core of insufferable {{Jerkass}}. In general, if anyone’s going to reveal Pierce’s nicer side, it’s Annie.
* KavorkaMan: He’s been divorced seven times. This means ''seven different women agreed to marry him in the first place''.
** SerialSpouse
* [[spoiler:KilledOffForReal]]: As of Season 5.
* TheKlutz: He manages to fall out of Jeff’s chair just by sitting in it, as well as getting the most laughs at Abed’s bad movie night by tripping and knocking over Chang’s popcorn.
** ThePratfall
* TheLoad: Whenever the group does a group activity. Subverted in "Basic Human Anatomy", when he does the group's History project by himself after they all left him behind to go have their episode plots.
* ManipulativeBastard: Best showed in “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”, where he makes the rest of the group paranoid for ostracizing him.
* ManChild: Bordering on PsychopathicManChild.
* MistakenForRacist: Despite his obvious lack of sensitivity, there are times when he genuinely doesn’t intend to be offensive.
* NotSoDifferent: Despite their obvious disdain for him, Pierce arguably has this going on with all the other members of the study group even if they don't want to acknowledge it:
** It's most prominent with Jeff, as it's often suggested that Pierce is essentially what an older version of Jeff will look like if Jeff doesn't improve his ways;
** Like Britta, Pierce often takes over-the-top offence at quasi-imagined slights and has some questionable political views (and understanding);
** He shares Abed's social ineptness and tendency to say whatever's on his mind regardless of who it might offend;
** He's intensely over-competitive and determined to win whatever the cost (even if it risks ruining his relationships with the people around him), like Annie. They also share a history of substance abuse;
** Shirley is often offended by his ignorance, intolerance and bigotry, but she can often be just as ignorant, intolerant and even bigoted;
** Like Troy, he's immature, a bit egotistical, and not very intelligent.
* TheObiWannabe: Fortunately, it’s pretty obvious to the rest of the study group from the beginning.
** [[spoiler:His [[TheCameo cameo]] in the Season 5 opener plays with this, when Jeff encounters what initially appears to be Pierce's sprit telling him, "Looks as if you've lost your way"... but it just turns out to be a hologram directing students to the on-campus "Pierce Hawthorne Museum of Gender Sensitivity and Sexual Potency".]]
* OddFriendship: Pierce and... anyone, really.
* OutOfFocus[=/=]SatelliteCharacter: As time has gone on, Pierce has gotten less and less focus to the point of being a point of contention for Chevy Chase in real life.
* PlayingAgainstType: Most of Chevy Chase’s more popular characters have tended to be smooth, suave and the smartest (or at least wittiest) guy in the room. Pierce Hawthorne? Not so much.
* PutOnABus: Graduates with Jeff at the end of Season 4. Season 5 reveals that he's banned from Greendale.
** [[spoiler:BusCrash: He's revealed to have died off-screen in [[Recap/CommunityS5E03BasicInterglutealNumismatics "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics"]].]]
* RacistGrandpa: Naturally.
** Although unlike his father, who is actively malicious in his racism, Pierce [[InnocentBigot just doesn’t know better]].
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior
* SeniorSleepCycle: In “Remedial Chaos Theory”.
* SmallNameBigEgo
* TokenEvilTeammate: From time to time.
* TookALevelInJerkass: In season 2, he starts engaging in self-alienating behavior while simultaneously castigating the others for alienating him; this culminates in the events of “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” “[[Recap/CommunityS2E23AFistfulOfPaintballs A Fistful of Paintballs]],” and “For a Few Paintballs More.” In season 3, that level of jerkass seems to have receded, returning him to the sympathetic bumbler of season 1.
* TotallyRadical: His attempt to coin the phrase “streets ahead”.
* TroubledSympatheticBigot: Can come across as this. Pierce’s inappropriateness, overzealous creativity, and pathological need to be accepted at all costs are all rooted in frustrations getting attention from his father and his fear that his age is now isolating himself from the rest of the study group.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist
* WellDoneSonGuy: Revealed as one in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E13CelebrityPharmacology Celebrity Pharmacology]].”
* YuriFan: Or at least he thinks GirlOnGirlIsHot.
** May be a {{subversion}}, as despite his tendency toward perversion, in “Advanced Gay” he says that he hates lesbians.
** Although he did have that oddly supportive letter for Britta after she “came out” for “dating a lesbian”.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Abed Nadir]]
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/abed_7105.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:300: [[MetaGuy I have a profile pic now.]] Cool. Coolcoolcool.]]
Played by Danny Pudi.
A media-aware and pop-culture-obsessed film student who is either [[AmbiguousDisorder suffering from an unspecific personality disorder]] or is just [[CloudCuckoolander very eccentric]]. He tends to view the world around him [[GenreSavvy as if he and his friends were the main characters in a weekly television sitcom about a group of oddball students]]. As such, he tends to make [[LampshadeHanging frequent references, comparisons]] [[InvokedTrope and ‘homages’]] to various TV shows and movies. Legend has it that Abed himself wrote the entirety of tvtropes.com. Only two people have ever seen this website: you and Abed.
* ActorSharedBackground: Abed is half-Polish, as is his actor, Danny Pudi.
* {{Adorkable}}: Oh so very much. In his usual GenreSavvy way, he's actually aware that he comes across as this and that girls are attracted to him because of it.
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with or changing the clocks for daylight savings. The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
** This is lampshaded in “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” in which his ‘title’ is Abed the Undiagnosable.
** Also lampshaded in the rap song in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E10RegionalHolidayMusic Regional Holiday Music]]”: “On the spectrum? None of your business”.
** However, in the pilot episode, Jeff explicitly tells him he has Asperger’s syndrome. It comes off more as an angry retort than a statement of fact.
* AuthorAvatar: WordOfGod again; DanHarmon has said that he has eventually come to believe that Abed is the character that best represented him. [[spoiler:Make what you will of the reveal of Abed as the OnlySaneMan in "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps", which came after Harmon had first publicly said that he felt this way.]]
* AwesomenessByAnalysis: He’s so GenreSavvy that he can predict, word for word, how anyone in the group will respond to a given situation.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E08CooperativeCalligraphy Cooperative Calligraphy]]”, it was revealed that in this fashion he [[spoiler:figured out the menstrual cycles of the women in the group]].
** PropheciesAreAlwaysRight: Any prophecy he makes in this fashion ''will'' be accurate.
*** Later episodes seem to be suggesting that Abed is not as accurate as he thinks, however; “[[Recap/CommunityS3E16VirtualSystemsAnalysis Virtual Systems Analysis]]” suggests that his analysis is ultimately affected by his insecurities and his personal relationships with the group. In that episode, his predictions lead him to conclude that Britta and Troy’s lunch date will go poorly; this is a reflection of his underlying concern that he will be gradually excluded, however, and the date in fact goes very well.
* BadassBookworm
* BatmanGambit: A prime example would be him manipulating Jeff and Britta in order to finish a student film, which would then help him patch things up with his father.
* BollywoodNerd: Spoofed. One of his nicknames is “{{Film/Slumdog|Millionaire}}”.
* BreakoutCharacter
** Teased a few times:
--->'''Troy:''' Do you just constantly have your own little side adventures?\\
'''Abed:''' Yep.\\
'''Troy:''' [[BlatantLies … Me too.]]
* BrutalHonesty: Abed tends to deliver cutting analyses of people without any sort of sugary coat. It becomes a plot point in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E07AerodynamicsOfGender Aerodynamics of Gender]].”
* CannotConveySarcasm: He has to announce whenever he’s being sarcastic as well as announce when he’s finished.
* CatchPhrase: (points) “Cool. (beat) Coolcoolcool.”
* ChickMagnet: Abed has no problem attracting girls because he’s {{Adorkable}} and his aloofness reminds them of their DaddyIssues.
* CloudCuckoolander
* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: His encyclopedic command of tropes gives him the full-on power of prophecy. He shot a video where the study group bands together to stop Jeff from living out of his car … ''the week before it happened to the characters themselves''.
* DawsonCasting: Abed’s exact age is never specified, but he’s probably in his early twenties. Danny Pudi was 30 when the series began airing.
* {{Deconstruction}}: His problems and issues were a central focus in Season 3, along with the difficulties that his condition produced in enabling him to form connections with and empathize with others. [[spoiler:By the end of the season, he mentally snaps and admits that he does have problems and needs help.]]
** Taken further in season 5 after Troy's departure. Without his best friend around to indulge his childish behaviors, Abed's forced to interact more with other members of the group who are far less tolerable of his antics, and his reactions to their disapproval go beyond the usual deconstruction of his control freak tendencies into borderline JerkAss territory.
* DitzyGenius: There is no one who knows more about pop culture than Abed.
* TheEmpath: He predicts the way the other characters will act with eerie accuracy, thanks to his surprising insight which especially shows in the film about his dad.
* FakeNationality: Abed and his dad as Palestinians, or as any kind of Arab: Danny Pudi (Abed) is half-Indian and half-Polish (and grew up speaking Polish in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}), while Iqbal Theba (Abed’s dad) is Pakistani. The Arabic they speak in “Introduction to Film,” however, is real.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Melancholic
* FourthWallObserver: [[Recap/CommunityS2E05MessianicMythsAndAncientPeoples At one point]] he looks directly at the camera and says “This ''is'' the movie!” while someone sings “Abed!” in the background.
* GenreSavvy: His defining characteristic.
** As he says, talking about people like they’re in a TV show is his gimmick and that they “leaned pretty hard on that last week.” He then says that he “can lay low for an episode.” As mentioned above, this becomes DangerouslyGenreSavvy at times (oddly enough it is relatively rare that he is victim to WrongGenreSavvy).
** He’s even GenreSavvy about having an AmbiguousDisorder—he got out of a conversation with Chang where he was caught in a lie by pretending to ‘glitch’ in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E12AsianPopulationStudies Asian Population Studies]]”, making Chang go away in frustration.
--->'''Abed:''' Works every time.
* GeekPhysiques
* GiverOfLameNames: Self-confessed. Gems include Bing-Bong, Marrrrrrr (as Jeff observes, “Boy, you weren’t kidding”) and Hector the Well-Endowed (“I made that one with [[HoYay Troy in mind]]”).
* HeroicBlueScreenOfDeath
* HeterosexualLifePartners: With Troy.
* HiddenDepths: "Virtual Systems Analysis" reveals that he is deeply insecure about his place in the group. To elaborate, Annie tells him that his "simulations" in the Dreamitorium need to take other people's feelings into account (and she messes around with his mock-up "Dreamitorium engine" to reflect this change). This causes him to go into a HeroicBSOD and drag Annie into a "simulation" where other people's feelings are taken into account, from which he is noticably absent. Annie later finds him jammed into a simulated locker, where he reveals his fear that if he considers how the rest of the group feels, then he'll have to face the possibility that they don't actually want him around.
* HyperAwareness: See AwesomenessByAnalysis.
--->'''Abed:''' I'm used to being the only observer.
* [[InformedJudaism Informed Islam]]: Abed’s religion doesn’t really come up, except at Christmas or when Pierce wants to be [[RacistGrandpa Pierce.]]
* InnocentlyInsensitive
* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: Pierce routinely gets his name wrong, calling him “Ay-bed” (as in, “the Ay-rab”).
* TheLancer: During the paintball episodes, particularly in Season 2. In “For a Few Paintballs More”, he deliberately calls dibs on the “[[Franchise/StarWars Han]] [[LoveableRogue Solo]] [[TheLancer role]]”.
* LostInCharacter: For his walk-on role in ''Series/{{Cougartown}}''. Very, ''very'' lost.
* LovesMyAlterEgo: Annie has a tendency to swoon and show increased interest in Abed whenever he cosplays as [[Series/MadMen Don Draper]], [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]] or Franchise/{{Batman}}.
* [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Manic Pixie Dream Boy]]: Discussed in-universe; Troy describes him as “a magical, elf-like man who makes us all more magical by being near us”.
** Also a {{Deconstruction}}: his antics can be exhausting and irresponsible, and his odd outlook on life may stem from an AmbiguousDisorder.
* MetaGuy: Abed’s MediumAwareness and GenreSavvy LeaningOnTheFourthWall (if not outright [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaking it]]) is {{justified|Trope}} as him being a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} (or at least a GeniusDitz) with some degree of ObfuscatingStupidity or [[ObfuscatingInsanity Insanity]]—Britta worries in an early episode that he doesn’t know the difference between real life and television. In fact, he has transcended normal GenreSavvy into the realms of prophesy now that he is taking film classes. WildMassGuessing has postulated that he is either a patron of this site or [[MediumAwareness knows that he’s fictional]]. Examples can be found on [[Quotes/{{Community}} the Quotes page]].
** Lampshaded in “Anthropology 101”: Abed asks Shirley if she would “spin off with him” and she responds, “I don’t understand, is this you being meta?”
** WordOfGod from [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/community-creator-dan-harmon,45508/ this interview with creator Dan Harmon]] states that Abed will never directly break the FourthWall.
** That being said, there are a few times when it’s arguable he’s done so already. He sung a variation of the theme song in “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.” It’s almost like Abed can see the fourth wall out of the corner of his eye, and the only thing he can’t do is look into the camera and address the audience.
** From the same episode, as they walk through the valley where the plants sing Christmas carols, Pierce asks if it will be “expensive to walk though here,” to which Abed answers “No, these songs are all public domain.” That joke doesn’t even make sense out of the context of them knowing they’re in a TV show. Suffice to say, ''Community'' plays pretty fast and loose with the fourth wall.
*** But that’s the beauty of Abed—the joke does make sense if you believe Abed is such a Cloudcookoolander that he sometimes believes he’s a character in a TV series, and talks in a manner consistent with being one, when he isn’t (even though he is). Abed is a TV character who often has delusions that he is a TV character; this is part of his characterisation and it is possible for him to comment on it without breaking the fourth wall.
** In the “Twittersode” before the Season Two finale, Abed is the only one able to see that every character ends their tweets with a hashtag referencing the show itself.
--->'''[=AbedsTweets=]:''' Why do we keep typing “// #[=NBCCommunity=]?”\\
'''[=JeffWingerAtLaw=]:''' @[=AbedsTweets=] Nobody knows what you’re talking about. AGAIN.=]
** In “Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples” he [[AsideGlance looks at the camera]] saying “This is the movie.”
* MissingMom: Sadly he has one.
* MixedAncestry: Palestinian father, Polish mother.
* MotorMouth
* TheMovieBuff: And how!
* NerdsAreSexy: Despite [[NoSocialSkills a clear lack of social skills]], he seems to have little difficulty attracting women (he’s {{adorkable}} and [[DaddyIssues his aloofness subconsciously reminds them of their fathers]]). He has also made out with the hottest girl in school.
* NiceGuy
* NoSocialSkills
* OnlySaneMan: Played with; he definitely has some issues, but despite his eccentric way of looking at the world, Abed can sometimes come across as being more sensible, calm and down-to-earth than his supposedly more ‘normal’ friends. Seemingly confirmed in a literal way at the end of “[[Recap/CommunityS3E05HorrorFictionInSevenSpookySteps Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps]],” where it’s revealed that [[spoiler:Britta’s only psych test that ''didn’t'' come up with something absolutely dreadful was his.]]
** However, Season 3 reveals that Abed is quite fragile without the stabilizing presence of Troy, and is aware of the risk of being institutionalised if he loses his grip.[[spoiler: After trying to cut off Jeff’s arm, it’s hard to call him the only sane man.]]
* PassThePopcorn: Part of his MetaGuy shtick. He goes as far as giving cues to the players so they know how to proceed cinematically.
* PlatonicLifePartners: With Annie.
* PopCulturedBadass
* TheRainman:
** In his own words, “I know you guys all so well I can predict your behavior.”
** There’s a throwaway reference to ''Film/RainMan'' in “Physical Education” when Jeff spills a bag of bagels on the floor and Abed glances down at them briefly before saying, “Thirteen.”
** Pierce and Duncan have both referred to him as such.
** In “Pillows and Blankets”, the opening narration describes him as “unable to pay parking tickets or know left from right without mouthing the Pledge of Allegiance.”
** In “Virtual Systems Analysis”, Abed has a voiceover, “I am Abed Nadir, and I don’t know a lot of things everyone else knows,” while an analog clock (confirmed in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E17BasicLupineUrology Basic Lupine Urology]]”), a restaurant check, shoes with untied laces, and a pile of papers (possibly tax forms) float around.
** Abed’s Season 3 quirks are symptoms of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia dyscalculia]], most obviously his difficulty with analog clocks and left/right confusion. The disorder is characterized by difficulty with arithmetic, conflicting with the ''Rain Man'' reference from Season 1.
** Lampshaded in “Digital Estate Planning” when he becomes [[KissMeImVirtual rather fond]] of an NPC in the game they’re playing:
-->'''Britta:''' Abed, she’s a program.
-->'''Abed:''' People have said similar things about me.
-->'''Pierce:''' Uh oh, he’s playing the Rain Man card. Let’s bounce.
* RedOniBlueOni: The Blue to Troy's Red.
* ReferenceOverdosed: References are basically how he communicates with the world.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E16CommunicationStudies Communication Studies]],” he gets drunk and is horrified to discover he can’t recall any shows or movies to reference. At one point, to keep up appearances, he just says “movie reference”.
* SarcasmBlind: Early Season 1. [[ItGetsBetter He gets better.]]
** He does tend to need to announce to everyone when he’s planning to or using sarcasm, however.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in “Advanced Criminal Law”:
-->'''Abed:''' Troy invented rap music, and he’s related to Danny Glover, and [[BarackObama President Obama]].\\
'''Troy:''' Hey man, that stuff I said this morning wasn’t true, I was just messing with you.\\
'''Abed:''' You were lying?\\
'''Troy:''' Yeah, as a joke. You’ve never had somebody mess with you before?\\
'''Abed:''' Yes, just kidding, no. Like that? … This isn’t a table. ''(Laughs)'' … That’s funny.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Sensitive Guy to Troy’s Manly Man.
* SpeaksInShoutouts
* StatOVision: How Abed sees the world.
* TheStoic: Easily the most patient of the group and least likely to get upset. He’s even unfazed by sitting through ''more than twenty-six hours'' of Duncan’s psychology experiment.
** However, Abed quickly loses his cool when something interferes with the order of his universe (changing his apartment, setting the clocks back, etc.). A danger sign is a continuous, high-pitched wail.
* TagalongKid: Although Annie and Troy are technically younger than he is. Doubles as the group’s [[TheSmartGuy Smart Guy]].
* TinMan
* TookALevelInJerkass: Season 3 saw him become a bit more ill-tempered and insulting to his friends than the first two seasons.
** And again in Season 5 after Troy leaves.
* TwoDecadesBehind: His 1980s references. Abed is aged somewhere between 21 and 27, which makes his constant ’80s references 10 to 20 years behind where they should be. Most of his references should be from TheNineties and the TurnOfTheMillennium. Obviously the reason is because Dan Harmon (born January 3, 1973) and his references are taken from the ’80s and early ’90s when he grew up and are transferred into his writing. The show has lampshaded this oddity; it’s often made clear that Abed is a fanatical consumer of pop culture in a way most people aren’t and that he goes to way greater lengths than most would in pursuit of it. The weirdest example is his encyclopaedic knowledge of ''Series/WhosTheBoss'' which (depending on the exact age of Abed) began when Abed wouldn’t have been born yet and ended before he had started preschool.
** Not necessarily weird, given his penchant for marathon-ing already finished TV shows.
* TheUnsmile: {{Averted|Trope}}. His most common expression is a dead pokerface, but on the couple of occasions when he does smile … it’s pretty adorable.
** Played enormously straight in “Remedial Chaos Theory”, though he’s obviously forcing it.
* VagueAge: He’s somewhere in his twenties, but where?
-->'''Jeff:''' Abed is an adult and a U.S. citizen … right?\\
'''Abed:''' (nods)
* WellDoneSonGuy: At first his traditionalist father is disappointed that he wants to study film instead of taking over the family falafel restaurant. He later changes his mind after seeing one of his son’s films.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Occasionally. It’s the closest he ever gets to being GenreBlind.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Shirley Bennett]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/community_s2_yvette_nicole_brown_002_7938.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:Oh, that’s nice!]]
Played by Yvette Nicole Brown.
A divorced housewife and mother who started attending business classes at the school following her divorce. [[TheFundamentalist A devout Christian]], she tends to see herself as [[TeamMom the group’s moral and spiritual compass and conscience]]—whether the group wants her to or not.
* ActorAllusion: Subverted by Yvette Nicole Brown in RealLife. On Mother’s Day 2012, she tweeted “Thanks for all the sweet Mother’s Day wishes—but I’m not a mom, I just play one on television.”
** Played straight when she mentions the movie poster with “[[Film/TheUglyTruth the heart over the man’s junk]]” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E07IntroductionToStatistics Introduction to Statistics]]”. Yvette was in this movie.
* TheAlcoholic: Started drinking a lot after her divorce, and in the [[spoiler:darkest timeline]] as well.
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: All of her attempts toward romance after her divorce fail, including her memorable fling with the sexy dreadlocks guy in “Contemporary American Poultry”.[[spoiler: Abed proves to her that the only reason he hung around Shirley was because she fed him chicken fingers.]]
* TheAtoner: It’s implied on a few occasions that the strength of her religious faith has something to do with her guilt about her former alcoholism, and it’s outright stated that it has a lot to do with her being a bully as a twelve-year-old.
* BadassPreacher: Shirley is both the most religious member of the study group and the most prone to violence. She’s absolutely terrifying in “Pillows and Blankets”.
** She cosplayed as one of these during the second paintball game.
* BerserkButton: She is touchy about her age, her weight, and doesn’t particularly appreciate jibes about her religious beliefs either.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Shirley in general appears to have deep-seated rage issues underneath her saccharine-sweet exterior, as noted by Jeff in the pilot:
-->'''Jeff:''' Shirley has earned our respect. Not as a wife, not as a mother, but as a ''woman''. And don’t test her on that, because that thing about the jukebox was ''way too specific'' to be improvised.
** Shirley also threatens Jeff with a pizza slicer at one point.
** She humiliated foosball competitors as a child.
** She also takes to VideoGameCrueltyPotential disconcertingly quickly.
** She's ''extremely'' vicious during the campus-wide pillow fight in "Pillows and Blankets".
* BitchInSheepsClothing: She can come off like this -- her sugary-sweet exterior conceals an extremely short and sometimes vicious temper, a self-righteous and judgemental nature and what can be quite a bitchy personality at times.
* BlackBestFriend: Mostly to Annie but sometimes to Britta, and in one episode, to Jeff.
* CatchPhrase: “Oh, that’s nice!”
** Shirley and Annie’s dual “Awwwwww!”
* TheCastShowoff: Her singing talents have been put to use more than once.
* CharacterDevelopment: In the second half of season 3, her bigotry and self-righteousness is significantly toned down. Possibly because of [[spoiler: her remarriage with Andre.]]
* TheConscience: Shirley sees herself as playing this role within the group; it’s subverted more often than not.
* TheCutie: With her sweet motherly tone, especially during her {{Catch Phrase}}s.
* DeadpanSnarker: “Oh look, Britta brought what she believes in—nothing.”
* FatGirl: Shirley, followed closely by Jeff, is the study group member most often shown concerned about their weight.
* FeminineWomenCanCook: One of her talents is baking, and she hopes to use her business degree to sell her brownies online.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Sanguine
* TheFundamentalist
* GlurgeAddict
* HeelFaceTurn: Did one as a 12-year-old girl, after [[spoiler:making 10-year-old Jeff wet his pants]].
* HidingBehindReligion: Jeff accuses Shirley of this in “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism” [[spoiler:when he learns that Shirley was his childhood bully]]. While he’s (understandably) overwrought at the time and Shirley is a genuinely religious person, a good case can be made that this isn’t actually that far off from the truth; she does tend to use her religious beliefs as a way of feeling superior to others, manipulating them into doing what she wants through guilt and avoiding having to address the less savoury aspects of her personality (such as her volatile temper).
* HolierThanThou: Shirley is both the most passionately religious member of the study group and the most insufferably self-righteous and judgmental about it.
* {{Hypocrite}}: She's not nearly as moral and upstanding as she likes to think she is.
* HypocriticalHumor: Shirley tends to produce this kind of humour, usually by comparing various beliefs/ideas/practices unfavourably to her religious beliefs only to then either engage in the same things herself or by inadvertently suggesting that her particular beliefs are NotSoDifferent to those she condemns in condemning them.
* InnocentBigot: What she tries to pull off toward the members of the study group. It doesn’t go so well.
-->'''Shirley:''' (''to Annie'') I didn’t know you were a … Jew?
* IronicEcho: “That’s not nice...” in “Modern Warfare”.[[note]]To be fair to Shirley, Jeff had explicitly stated his intention to take the prize—priority class registration for the next semester—for himself. However, when he wins the game, he ''does'' offer her the chance to take exclusively morning classes so that she can go home to spend more time with her children.[[/note]]
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Although she can be a self-righteous ass to people [[spoiler:especially in her younger years towards kids like Jeff]], she does insist on being kind and is genuinely happy for anyone in the group when something ‘nice’ happens to them.
* LargeHam: “Ooh! Troy made God mad!”
* [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]: Whenever she uses religion, her TeamMom tendencies or, really, any predicament that befalls her as an excuse to get people to do as she wants.
-->'''Jeff:''' Let me guess. I’m not going to make a [[spoiler:pregnant]] woman storm off?
* NotSoAboveItAll: When Jeff gets into a fight in “Comparative Religion”. At first, she is insistent on considering Jeff ‘dead to her’ if he goes to his fight, but later on she admits the bullies Jeff was facing deserved a nice whooping and gets into it herself. Along with the entire study group.
-->'''Mike:''' What would Shirley do?
-->'''Jeff:''' She would shake your hand and wish you a merry Christmas.
-->(''Mike slams Jeff down'')
-->'''Shirley:''' Jeffrey! '''Kick his ass.'''
** This comes back brilliantly in the video game episode, where at first she is appalled at [[FelonyMisdemeanor Annie killing a (virtual) blacksmith]] … but when his pregnant wife comes downstairs, Shirley sets her on fire and smashes her to death and quickly goes on to make sure the whole family is dead and that the house is completely destroyed once they leave.
* OddCouple: Being a devoutly religious African-American homemaker and housewife, she tends to generate this kind of dynamic with Britta, who is almost her exact opposite in every way. Less so with Annie, whom she seems closer to, as they’re quite similar in many ways.
* PolitenessJudo: Her status as TeamMom gives her this ability. Case in point, the WWBJD bracelets.
* SassyBlackWoman: When she’s not being a GlurgeAddict.
** Actually, Shirley is largely an aversion of this trope, as Yvette Brown points out in [[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/28/community-alison-brie-yvette-nicole-brown-gillian-jacobs-megan-ganz-roundtable.html this roundtable interview]] that she and the show’s other female regulars conducted during their last day of shooting for season 3:
--->“As a black actor, it’s refreshing that I’m not playing the ‘sassy black woman.’ It’s something that Dan Harmon was cognizant of from the beginning. It is something that I’m always cognizant of. Every woman on the planet has sass and smart-ass qualities in them, but it seems sometimes only black women are defined by it. Shirley is a fully formed woman that had a sassy moment. Her natural set point, if anything, is rage. That’s her natural set point, suppressed rage, which comes out as kindness and trying to keep everything tight.”
* ShipperOnDeck: For Jeff and Britta, initially.
* SilkHidingSteel: Usually motherly and sweet, but can go from that to sassy in a second.
* StepfordSmiler: On the mild side of the trope, but she has ‘thinly veiled rage issues’ under her cheer.
* SugarAndIcePersonality: Obviously.
* [[spoiler:SurprisePregnancy: And it works out as a bit of FridgeBrilliance—as a devout Christian, would Shirley use contraception?]]
** [[spoiler: No, but she’s not allowed to have extramarital sex either. Especially with men who are married to someone else.]]
* TeamMom
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: What she wants to be for Jeff, besides Annie and Britta. In fact, she makes no secret of her belief that Jeff is physically attractive.
* TookALevelInBadass: The season two paintball finale.
* {{Tsundere}}: Frequently enough.
* UnreliableNarrator: Concerning her marriage. In season one, almost every reference she made to her husband centred around what a complete and utterly irredeemable bastard he was. Given that when we finally met him he turned out to be a pretty decent guy genuinely contrite about what happened, in addition to it being revealed that Shirley had problems with alcohol in her past, it can be safely assumed that Shirley is exaggerating and may not be as faultless in the original breakdown of her marriage as previously suggested.
* YoungerThanSheLooks: Only two years older than Jeff but her fussiness doesn’t help.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Annie Edison]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alison-brie-as-annie-in-community_8888.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:I’m Annie Edison, but people call me Psycho because I had a nervous breakdown in high school.]]
Played by Creator/AlisonBrie.
An insecure and neurotic [[TheSmartGirl overachiever]] attending Greendale following an addiction to prescription medication which ruined her previously flawless high-school record. [[BrainyBrunette Intelligent and driven]], she’s usually perky and cheerful but tends to get tightly-wound and uptight when things fail to go to plan or when matters of grades or academic achievement arise.
* ActorSharedBackground: Both Annie’s InformedJudaism and sexual encounter with a homosexual man are drawn from Alison Brie’s life.
* {{Adorkable}}: Often.
* AffectionateNickname: Vaughn calls her “mountain flower” when they’re dating. She and Jeff sometimes call each other “milady” and “milord.”
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: [[SingleGirlSeeksMostPopularGuy Her crush on Troy that she’s had since high school.]] When he remains [[ObliviousToLove totally oblivious to her]], she decides [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy to let him go]], although she still has a minor breakdown over it.
* AmbitionIsEvil: Played with; Annie does have a tendency to let her ambitions override her morals, but it’s never suggested that her ambitions themselves are bad, per se.
* BadassAdorable: In both {{paintball episode}}s. There are other instances though; in the climatic fight scene in “Comparative Religion,” she can be seen [[FunnyBackgroundEvent viciously whaling on three different opponents and winning]].
** In “Paradigms of Human Memory,” she’s shown to be a purple belt in jiujitsu.
* BeautifulAllAlong:
** She’s an interesting version of this, as rather than being called HollywoodHomely, she’s accepted as being ‘cute’ most of the time, but goes to a more sexy appearance by LettingHerHairDown.
--->'''Jeff:''' Annie’s pretty young. We try not to sexualize her.
** In another odd example, Troy is actually unaware that Annie is attractive until Jeff points it out to him. Then again, Troy is not exactly the brains of the operation. And he did say that that his high school memories with her blurred out her current beauty.
* BerserkButton: Being called "Little Annie Adderall", or taking her pen.
** Don’t [[spoiler:kiss her]], disappear for the summer without contact and then swear [[spoiler:you’re just friends. (Note, this was part of a fake confrontation with Jeff, but she admitted that it started getting a little real. So … acting?)]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Britta's Veronica for Jeff's Archie.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: As "[[Recap/CommunityS1E20TheScienceOfIllusion The Science of Illusion]]", "Anthropology 101", "Accounting For Lawyers" and "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" demonstrate, irking Annie Edison is not recommended. She can ge... aggressive.
** Annie has no issues taking down a man twice her size with chloroform … twice. And she seems totally prepared to do it to Jeff, too.
** She has also punched Jeff in the face and slammed his head into a table. Ouch.
* BreakoutCharacter
* BrainyBrunette
* {{Bridezilla}}: She’s all but building up to be one, judging how she seems to have a huge scrapbook on wedding preparations handy.
* CatchPhrase: Shirley and Annie’s dual “Awwwwww!”
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOoD4755pI Her gasping]].
* ClingyJealousGirl: [[spoiler:She does this to Jeff at the start of season 2.]]
* TheConscience
* CovertPervert: Many instances, but most noticeably in her stint as Hector, the Well Endowed.
** She also suggests that Jeff change his shirt because “it’s not working”, but really it’s just to sneak a peek of his chest.
** While the rest of the study group is averting their eyes from Jeff’s nakedness during his showdown with the Pool Professor, [[EatingTheEyeCandy Annie sneaks a few peaks.]]
* CryCute: Her [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tAs2x4HCfw “Disney face”]].
* CuteBookworm: Especially in the first season.
* CuteAndPsycho: A benign variety, but Annie has been shown to be one failing grade, lousy party, or bad round of model United Nations from a complete mental breakdown.
* TheCutie: Annie is the living, breathing embodiment of this trope.
* DawsonCasting: Annie was 19 years old when the series began, while Alison Brie was 26.
* TheFinickyOne: Starts out this way, but becomes more fun-loving and relaxed as time goes on.
* FormerlyFat
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Choleric
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: She is a veritable machine for this trope.
* GirlinessUpgrade: Applied and then semi-inverted. Annie starts off dressing like a normal 18-year-old, then gradually begins wearing flowery dresses and cardigans more often, to the point that they comprise the bulk of her wardrobe. Come season 5, Annie's wardrobe has undergone a major overhaul to better fit her being more assertive and mature, with her wearing sweaters over blouses and pants.
* GirlsLoveStuffedAnimals: She seems to have quite a healthy collection of them.
* GoGetterGirl
* HiddenDepths: She’s a lot more mature and observant than she lets on, particularly from the third season on. She recognizes her attraction to Jeff [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys for what it is]], and was able to understand and reach Abed on a level that even Troy couldn’t.
* HollywoodNerd and HollywoodHomely: She was unpopular in high school.
** Justified with the revelation that in high school Annie [[FormerlyFat was overweight]], wore braces and had terrible acne. It was only after she went into rehab for her Adderall addiction (after screaming “Everyone’s a robot!” while running through a plate glass door) [[SheIsAllGrownUp that she became attractive]]. That, and she’s clearly neurotic. [[TheOphelia Not that this is necessarily a turn-off]].
** Lampshaded in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E24EnglishAsASecondLanguage English as a Second Language]]” when Jeff scolds her.
--->'''Jeff:''' You are insecure, because you didn’t get hot until ''after'' high school.\\
'''Troy:''' That’s true!
** We finally see what Annie looked like during high school in “[[Recap/CommunityS4E12HeroicOrigins Heroic Origins]],” and she looks exactly as she does in the present day but with glasses, braces, and messy hair.
* IJustWantToBeBadass: Her reason for trying to be the CowboyCop to Shirley’s ByTheBookCop when both become security guards at the school. Shirley seems to think it should be the other way around.
* InformedJudaism
* TheIngenue: She gives this impression, and it’s mostly true (some subversive personal history notwithstanding).
* InnocentBlueEyes
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Annie can come off as being overly competitive, nagging and judgmental, but it’s mostly a front for her own neuroses, and she’s a very nice and caring person underneath it all.
* JewishAndNerdy
* MeaningfulName: ''[[TheCutie Grace]]''.
* MsFanservice: For a series that tries not to sexualize her, Annie certainly does seem to get wet, dirty, endure clothing damage and get undressed quite a bit. Not to mention the fact that she’s the program’s go-to girl for fetishy costumes.
** InnocentFanserviceGirl: She used to wear back braces so she sticks her chest out a lot.
*** In the episode "Accounting for Laywers" there is a moment where Troy and Abed are caught looking at her breasts when she is shaking her chest. To be honest, most male audience members were probably looking at the same thing.
* MoralityPet: To Pierce; he openly admits that she’s his favourite of the group and generally, if he reveals a nicer, more generous or decent side to his personality, Annie will be involved somehow.
** She is also this to Jeff (which feeds into their ShipTease).
* TheOphelia: Especially back in her Adderall days.
* ParentalAbandonment: Annie going to rehab for her Adderall addiction resulted in her being estranged from her family, who would rather have [[StepfordSmiler pretended the whole ordeal never happened]].
* PluckyGirl
* ThePollyanna: This trope could just as easily be called ‘The Annie’.
* ProperTightsWithSkirt : more often from Season 2
* PuppyDogEyes: And she knows how to use them, too.
-->'''Jeff:''' You’re becoming dangerous, Annie. It’s those doe-eyes. Disappointing you is like choking Disney/TheLittleMermaid with a bike chain.
* ScheduleFanatic: Demonstrated in the “Study Break” shorts.
* SeriouslyScruffy: In one of the documentary episodes, the Dean gets Annie to work as a script supervisor while he directs a commercial. He suffers from a severe case of SanitySlippage, and after several days of putting up with his increasingly bizarre demands, Annie is completely out of it and ungroomed. She rationalizes the Dean's behaviour because she doesn't want to admit that she's wasted several weeks of her life helping him.
* SexySantaDress: She wears one in "[[Recap/CommunityS3E10RegionalHolidayMusic Regional Holiday Music]]." Also, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqB52bdaVTE the scene in question]] includes:
** BabyTalk: A la BettyBoop.
** BrainlessBeauty: Pretending that as a Jew she knows nothing about Christmas.
** EveryoneIsChristianAtChristmas: Sarcastically inverted in the lyrics.
* StepfordSmiler: She’s really frustrated with how her life turned out.
* StockingFiller: She mostly wears these.
* SweaterGirl: Cardigans appear to make up about half of her wardrobe.
* SycophanticServant: Annie tends to gravitate towards whoever's in charge in order to feel helpful/wanted, insinuating herself as their [[TheDragon Dragon]] or helper. [[StatusQuoIsGod She usually resets by the end of the episode.]]
* TeachersPet: For instance, in “Physical Education”, instead of putting his binder back, Señor Chang drops it on the floor and orders Annie to pick it up.
* TechnicalVirgin: Some have speculated that she is one, based on A) being high on Adderall, B) having never seen her boyfriend’s (or any man’s) penis, and C) her boyfriend crying throughout the act (Britta theorizes he was gay), leading some fans to (wishfully) think sex never actually occurred.
-->'''Shirley:''' Annie, being a virgin in this day and age is something to be proud of. You’re like a unicorn!
* TeensAreMonsters: She appears to have been on the receiving end of this trope a lot during high school
* TeensAreShort: She is the youngest and shortest member of the group.
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: [[spoiler:She’s this for Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E25PascalsTriangleRevisited Pascal’s Triangle Revisited]]”.]]
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The girly girl to Britta’s tomboy.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Hilariously, every episode that includes Todd, poor guy.
* VerbalTic: Her little half-gasp, half-squeak of indignant horror whenever she’s shocked or offended.
* VocalEvolution: Her voice is getting noticeably less high-pitched and little-girl-ish as the series goes on.
* [[WellDoneSonGuy Well Done Daughter Girl]]: It’s implied at times that a lot of Annie’s issues (including her pill addiction) stem from overly demanding, hypercritical parents, her mother especially, whose expectations she could never hope to meet.
* WhenSheSmiles
* WideEyedIdealist: She calls herself “Irony-Free Annie” for a very good reason.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Troy Barnes]]
[[quoteright:330:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Donald-Glover-as-Troy-community-15622785-449-600_907.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:330:Did you know that Gogurt is ''just yogurt''?]]
Played by [[Music/ChildishGambino Donald Glover]].
A charismatic but [[TheDitz not-incredibly-intelligent high-school]] football star and [[JerkJock jock]]. Was previously high-school classmates with Annie, and is Abed’s best friend.
* ActorAllusion: In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E11ThePoliticsOfHumanSexuality The Politics of Human Sexuality]]”, when Pierce discusses bringing a date to the STD fair, Troy muses “There’s a joke here,” and begins to write in his notebook. Donald Glover, in addition to being an actor and musician, is also a standup comedian. In “Advanced Criminal Law”, Abed mentions that Troy, as a joke, says he is related to Danny Glover.
* ActorSharedBackground: Donald Glover was raised a Jehovah’s Witness.
* {{Adorkable}}
* AmbiguouslyBi: Due to copious HoYay.
-->'''Troy:''' (to Abed) All right, let’s do the sex scene.
* [[spoiler:BetterAsFriends: How his relationship with Britta comes to an end.]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Jeff's Veronica for Britta's Archie.
* BlackAndNerdy: His friendship with Abed brings out his inner {{geek}}.
* BlackBestFriend: To Abed (although as a TokenMinority himself, it’s divorced of its UnfortunateImplications).
** Pierce invokes this trope by pointing out that his life has meaning now that he has a young African-American friend.
* BookDumb: At least in the beginning.
* BreakoutCharacter
* TheCastShowoff: Glover, who has released AlternativeRap records under the name Childish Gambino, finally gets a chance to rap in “Regional Holiday Music.”
** Also, his dancing skills in “Interpretive Dance”.
* CatchPhrase: “You just wrinkled my brain” and “He/She is like the (insert terrible thing here) of people”. Often attributed to him, [[BeamMeUpScotty though he’s never said it]], is “I like (insert thing here), but also I don’t”.
* CharacterDevelopment[=/=]TookALevelInKindness: The most noticeable example on the series (except for Jeff); starts off as immature and obsessed with popularity, becomes a responsible and kind young man who’s able to hold the group together in trying times.
* CloudCuckoolander
** CloudCuckoolandersMinder: To Abed, who is definitely the more odd and irresponsible of the two.
* DawsonCasting[=/=]PlayingGertrude: Donald Glover is actually nine months ''younger'' than Alison Brie, roles more or less inverted by their respective characters.
* TheDitz[=/=]DumbMuscle[=/=]PopularIsDumb: A classic example. God bless him, he is not the brightest bulb in the box.
-->'''Jeff:''' I want you to clear your mind.\\
'''Troy:''' (''immediately'') Done.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Phlegmatic
* TheGift: He’s a plumbing and air-conditioning-repair prodigy. [[RefusalOfTheCall Not that he wants to do either of those things.]]
** The end of Season 3 [[spoiler: ultimately sees him embrace his gift for air-conditioning repair.]]
* TheHeart: Later seasons have gradually suggested that Troy might be this for the study group; it’s quite notable that on the few occasions it’s suggested or looked like he’s about to leave, things have fallen apart for everyone very quickly.
** He’s usually the one who tries to stop the others from resorting to violence. But even he has his moments of weakness, it is he who suggests killing Annie after she reveals that she [[spoiler:[[Recap/CommunityS2E04BasicRocketScience sabotaged the space simulation]]]].
* HeterosexualLifePartners: With Abed. [[HoYay Maybe]].
* HiddenDepths: Has a talent for mechanical maintenance and is a phenomenal (interpretive) dancer.
* HollywoodJehovahsWitness: Averted. He is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and this is often referenced and demonstrated in that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas or birthdays. However, you otherwise couldn’t tell that he was a Witness if he didn’t say so.
-->''“Yeah, but we don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas and we can’t drink. But it helps.”''
* InnocentInaccurate
* IWantToBeARealMan
* JerkJock[=/=]DumbJock: He’s more {{lovable|Jock}} now but apparently in high school, and to a degree in the early episodes of the show, Troy wasn’t without his {{Jerkass}} side, as demonstrated in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E06FootballFeminismAndYou Football, Feminism and You]]” when a chance to join the Greendale football team ends up with him strutting around in a self-obsessed manner lambasting people at random with his “politically conservative high school’s shamefully outdated fight rap(s).”
** BlackAndNerdy: Hanging out with Abed has had an effect on him, in that he’s gradually lost interest in his former jock pursuits and has embraced his inner geek more.
* LargeHam
* TheLeader: He occasionally supplants Jeff in the role. Unlike Jeff, he’s a clear Type II.
* LovableJock: If Troy didn’t start out as this, then he’s certainly grown into it.
* {{Malaproper}}: Some of his gems include “all tomato” (ultimatum), “escape goat” (scapegoat) and “jugglenaut” (juggernaut).
* ManChild: Troy's last year of high school he witnesses Annie scream during a party “Everyone’s a robot!” as she ran through a window. As a result, it seems Troy remains a man-child out of fear. Shortly after Annie's dramatic departure Troy faked an injury by doing a keg flip. Troy's fake injury guaranteed that he could remain in his comfort zone as a man-child a little while longer. By delaying manhood he could continue to live a fun care-free life and not become an adult weighed down by the responsibilities of life thus becoming a robot. During a wedding Troy and Abed make an agreement not to act "weird". However, "weird" is really code for their childlike behaviors. When Troy sees the the monkey which he named "Annie's Boobs" run into the air ducts, he uses this as an excuse to escape the conformity (robot behaviors) of the adults around him. Abed would have continued with his appropriate adult like behaviors at the wedding had it not been for Troy pulling him back into the comfort of behaving like children together.
* MessianicArchetype: He’s apparently this for the air-conditioning repair school. Much to his bemusement.
* NiceGuy: As mentioned above, there’s a reason he and Britta are the only two members of the study group who haven’t taken a villainous role in the group at some point.
* ObliviousToLove: He is completely clueless to Annie’s obsession with him for ''years''. Ironically, Troy later finds himself in Annie’s shoes when Britta is oblivious to ''his'' crush.
* OnlySaneMan: A weird example. Troy is often shown to be an enormous CloudCuckooLander and man child, but only when interacting with Abed. When Abed’s not around, Troy is often the most normal member of the group.
* OutOfFocus: Only appears in five episodes of Season 5.
* {{Put on a B|us}}oat: For the rest of Season 5 (with Levar Burton). [[spoiler: They are captured by Mexican Gulf pirates the next episode as noted in a background newsfeed.]]
* RealMenDontCry: {{Averted|Trope}}, he cries often.
** Then lampshaded by Troy himself in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E10MixologyCertification Mixology Certification]]” by his reaction to getting a birthday cake with Jehovah’s Witness-appropriate language.
--->'''Troy:''' (''reading'') “Hello during a random dessert, the month and day of which coincide numerically with your expulsion from a uterus.” You guys, I ''[[BlatantLies never]]'' [[BlatantLies cry, but …]]
* RealMenWearPink
* RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Abed's Blue.
* [[spoiler:RelationshipUpgrade: With Britta between Season 3 and 4.]]
* SayingTooMuch: He does this at least twice, adding “Whoops/Oops” without actually changing his tone.
-->“How do you know it was ''our'' design? We submitted it anonymously. Whoops.”
-->“[[ItMakesSenseInContext You don’t like your movie, we can’t say the word Blade, there’s phones in the refrigerator, ooops.]]”
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: His usual reaction to any crisis is to start screaming and crying like a six-year-old girl. Usually accompanied with a jumpy little tantrum.
-->''“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING.”''
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Manly Man to Abed’s Sensitive Guy.
-->You could say Troy fills this trope all by himself, since he goes from manly man to sensitive guy at the drop of a hat.
* StepfordSmiler: In high school.
-->''“I was forced to smile when I didn’t feel like it.”''
* TwoferTokenMinority: African-American Jehovah’s Witness.
* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: Briefly with Annie.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Has a deathly fear of rats.
[[/folder]]
!!The Study Group (AKA “[[FiveManBand The]] [[EnsembleCast Greendale]] [[TrueCompanions Seven]]”).
[[folder: '''As a Whole''']]
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: All the girls have this in spades. It’s often played with, however:
** Shirley is devoted to Andre who, after we meet him, is consistently depicted as an otherwise decent man who made a mistake and is trying his best to make up for it;
** Annie’s crush on Jeff is often demonstrated to be unhealthy, or at the very least ill-advised, for both of them and she herself acknowledges that it's largely due to issues she has around loneliness and being a bit of a ControlFreak who finds the idea of a man completely changing his identity for her appealing;
** Britta’s thing for jerks and weirdos is often deconstructed as being the result of deep-seated self-esteem issues and self-loathing on her part, prompting her to throw herself into disastrous relationships with damaged goods as a subconscious way of validating her own lack of self-worth.
* BadassCrew: They have, among other things, survived through hellish days-long paintball tournaments, beat up a school bully gang, started a school riot, and [[spoiler:rescued their dean]] with an elaborate heist.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: All of them have their quirks and attitude, but nonetheless get their job(s) well-done.
* FiveManBand:
** TheLeader: Jeff
** TheLancer: Britta
** TheSmartGuy: Abed
** TheBigGuy: Troy
** TheChick: Annie
** TeamMom: Shirley
** [[TagalongKid Tagalong Old Guy]][=/=]TokenEvilTeammate: Pierce
* DysfunctionJunction: They consider each other their true family because their home lives suck so much.
* FiveTokenBand: They are of different ages, races, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds, and it’s often lampshaded. It's possible this was invoked seeing as [[MetaGuy Abed]] was the one that gathered them together.
* TheGenerationGap: A fundamental dynamic of the group, as they're all of different ages. It's most obvious between Pierce (Baby Boomer) and the rest of the group (Generation X and younger), but there are generational conflicts between Shirley, Jeff and Britta on one side and Troy, Abed and Annie on the other as well.
* TheHecateSisters: Britta (the crone), Annie (the maiden) and Shirley (the matron/mother).
* [[ItsAllAboutMe It’s All About Us]]: Other students often complain that everything seems to revolve around the study group.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Jeff is the most obvious example, but all of them could be considered as this.
* TheNotableNumeral: Known in-universe as “The Greendale Seven”. (The name usually comes up in unflattering contexts.)
* NotSoAboveItAll: The entire group seems to look down on Greendale's Crazy antics but tend to cause most of them. Specifically, Jeff, Britta, Shirley, Annie and Pierce try to seem mature but often fall to the level of Abed or Troy
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits
* TeachersPet: They are the Dean’s favorite students—roles they emphatically did not seek out.
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: At their worst.
* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Jeff (lord), Troy (hunter), Pierce (prophet).
* TheThreeFacesOfEve: Britta (seductress), Annie (child) and Shirley (wife).
* TrueCompanions
* VitriolicBestBuds: Shirley and Annie have become more competitive of each other by season 4.
** All of them could be said to be this with each other to some degree.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Jeff Winger]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/community_jeffwinger_4508.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:Why are people trying to teach me things at a school that has an express tuition aisle?]]
Played by Joel [=McHale=].
A charming but manipulative and AmoralAttorney who was forced to attend Greendale upon the discovery that his college credentials were forged. Responsible for the formation of the group as the inadvertent result of a plot to seduce Britta, he tends to act as the leader.
* AbusiveParents: In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E08HomeEconomics Home Economics]],” Jeff makes a throwaway reference to having a [[AlcoholicParent drunken]] and abusive dad when explaining how TV makes an excellent parent.
* ActorAllusion: Characters will often mock Jeff by calling him Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest is [=McHale’s=] RealLife SitcomArchNemesis.
* ActorSharedBackground: Jeff lived in UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} in his youth, as did Joel [=McHale=].
* AesopAmnesia: He seems to have to learn and relearn that he either needs to start treating his friends better and/or deal with the fact that he’s at Greendale and stop acting so high-and-mighty about everything very frequently.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E09ConspiracyTheoriesAndInteriorDesign Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design]]”:
--->'''Jeff:''' He doesn’t like fake courses, well, he’s about to get a real lesson on the fact that Jeff Winger ''never learns''.
** “[[Recap/CommunityS3E01Biology101 Biology 101]]” seems to suggest he has finally learned how much he needs his friends (at least subconsciously) just as they are no longer reliant on him, and “[[Recap/CommunityS3E22IntroductionToFinality Introduction to Finality]]” basically confirms that he’s abandoned his former self-serving attitude.
* AmoralAttorney: His {{backstory}}.
* TheAntiNihilist: His speech at the end of the season 3 finale definitely has shades of this, though considering his Aesop Amnesia mentioned above, God only knows how far into season 4 he’ll go without brushing off helping the rest of the study group.
** His most disrespectful moment in the whole season comes in the [[Recap/CommunityS4E13AdvancedIntroductionToFinality finale]], when he '''''begs''''' for a lavish graduation ceremony.
* [[spoiler: ApatheticTeacher: In "Introduction to Teaching", though he gets better.]]
* AttentionWhore: PlayedForDrama. He faked appendicitis in seventh grade so that people would worry about him (22 years later he keeps the cards he received under the bed to prove that somebody once cared for him.) Also see ItsAllAboutMe below.
* AuthorAvatar: According to WordOfGod, Jeff is based on a younger, more self-absorbed version of the show’s creator Creator/DanHarmon.
* AxCrazy: In “Biology 101” when he gets kicked out from the group he loses it and uses an actual axe to destroy their table.
* BatmanGambit: Manages to pull them off on a number of occasions (see “[[Recap/CommunityS1E23ModernWarfare Modern Warfare]]”, “Introduction to Finality”, “[[Recap/CommunityS3E20DigitalEstatePlanning Digital Estate Planning]]”).
* BavarianFireDrill: A key part of his MO. See the bit about “board-certified Spanish tutor” above.
* BelligerentSexualTension: Jeff and ''everyone''.
** Lampshaded almost word-for-word in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E21ParadigmsOfHumanMemory Paradigms of Human Memory]]”. They’ve been reading the trope pages again, haven’t they?
*** None of that chemistry is going Shirley’s way though, at least until “[[Recap/CommunityS3E09FoosballAndNocturnalVigilantism Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism]]”.
* BerserkButton:
** Don’t play mind games with Jeff when it comes to his long-lost father.
--->'''Jeff:''' If you’re lying to me, if my father isn’t coming, if a car pulls up and anyone other than my father steps out, say an actor or you in a wig, if you pull any ''[[Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff Ferris Bueller]]'', ''[[Film/TheParentTrap Parent Trap]]'', ''Series/ThreesCompany'', ''[[Film/FXMurderByIllusion F/X]]'', ''[=F/X=]2: the Deadly Art of Illusion'' bull-(bleep) I will beat you. And there will be [[AmusingInjuries nothing madcap or wacky about it]].
*** And he later makes good on his promise, chasing down the car Pierce is in, and dragging him out before proceeding to [[UnstoppableRage beat him until the other study group members try and pull him off]].
** Of course, Jeff has also been known to fake a BerserkButton, just to get out of a difficult conversation by having an excuse to storm off.
** Picking on Annie (especially if you’re outside the study group) also seems to be a BerserkButton for Jeff (although it’s inconsistently played).
*** As mentioned below under BullyHunter, he tends to confront bullies regardless of who they're picking on (although he usually frames it as confronting them for being obnoxious and irritating).
* BetterAsFriends[=/=]FriendsWithBenefits: Jeff and Britta’s relationship has zigzagged between the two; despite some romantic tension in season one, they appeared to have decided that they are BetterAsFriends—except it was revealed in “Paradigms of Human Memory” that they’d still been hooking up on occasion. The end of that episode, however, saw them apparently decide to call that quits as well, and it seems that they’re now just platonic friends.
* BettyAndVeronica: The Archie for Britta's Betty and Professor Slater's Veronica in the beginning.
** Later the Archie for Britta's Veronica and Annie's Betty.
** The Veronica to Troy's Betty for Britta's Archie.
* BlatantLies: The other key part of his MO.
* BreakTheHaughty: Much of Jeff’s character arc basically involves getting him down from his high horse by any means necessary, usually through a combination of humiliation. {{Deconstruction}} and good old-fashioned CharacterDevelopment.
* BrilliantButLazy: Played with for Jeff; he’s clearly quite clever, he’s ''very'' lazy, but whenever he tries to coast on this, things usually go wrong for him.
-->'''Jeff:''' Well, the funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without ever having to do any work.
* BrokenAce
* BullyHunter: Jeff’s a curious example; on the surface, he seems thoroughly reluctant to involve himself in anything outside his own self-involved little bubble, and isn’t adverse to letting rip with the odd snide and cutting comment himself, yet he consistently appears unwilling and/or unable to let bullying go unchallenged. Pretty much every time a bully/group of bullies has appeared, even if the victim isn’t one of his friends Jeff’s more often than not ended up confronting them; he’ll usually frame it as confronting them for being a loud, obnoxious and irritating dickhead rather than a bully, but nevertheless. In “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism” we learn Jeff himself was a victim of bullying as a child, which might explain this.
* CallingTheOldManOut: To both his own and Pierce’s father.
* TheCasanova: Especially noticeable in the first half of season 1, somewhat tuned down afterwards.
** SlutShaming: Gets a lot of flak from the rest of the group for his womanizing tendencies.
* CatchPhrase: “But here’s the thing.” Usually said when he’s endeavoring to be the voice of reason.
* CelebrityResemblance: Other people note his resemblance to a) Ryan Seacrest and b) Thoraxis, an ''InspectorSpacetime'' villain.
* CharacterDevelopment[=/=]TookALevelInKindness: In the four years he’s attended Greendale and hung around the study group, it has become increasingly clear that Jeff has come a long way from the almost completely self-absorbed and amoral person he was at the beginning of the series.
** Just one example of how far he has travelled: the first “Winger Speech” he gives in the [[Recap/CommunityS1E01Pilot pilot episode]] shows that he is a moral relativist, that there is no such thing as truth. By the end of the third season he has renounced that belief and become a moral absolutist stating that “the truth is helping others is good”.
* TheCharmer
* ChewbaccaDefense[=/=]CourtroomAntic: What his arsenal of lawyer tricks consists of.
* ChronicHeroSyndrome: A very, ''very'' reluctant (and occasionally quite petty) version of the trope.
* CompetitionFreak: He just '''has''' to be the best at everything he participates in. This nearly drives him crazy when he meets [[TheAce Rich]] at the pottery class.
* [[CoolBigSis Cool Big Bro]]: He steps into the role for the younger members of the study group. An early example would be during TheTag when he walks in on a krumping session between Troy and Abed and soon joins them.
* CoolShades: Which he will usually combine with a leather jacket and a well-timed GlassesPull for maximum effect.
* [[MommyIssues Daddy Issues]]
** DisappearedDad: Apparently his father is a conman who “couldn’t leave a trail if he wanted to.”
* TheCynic: Jeff is practically the embodiment of an extremely cynical and jaded person.
* TheDandy: His preoccupation with his clothes and his ‘crispy’ hair is a RunningGag.
* DeadpanSnarker
* [[DefrostingIceQueen Defrosting Ice King]]
* DependingOnTheWriter: How much of a prick he can be.
* {{Dismotivation}}: Played with; Jeff wants to get his degree, get out of Greendale and back into his cushy high-powered lawyer lifestyle, but is incredibly lazy, used to coasting on his wits and charm, and sees doing any more than the bare minimum amount of effort required to get by, be it in getting his degree or doing anything for his friends, as a personal failure. Naturally, he often falls into the trap of doing more to actually avoid doing anything (and consequently bringing on more trouble and strife to himself as a result) than would be necessary if he just sucked it up and put an honest effort in.
* TheDitherer: Played with; on the surface, Jeff is confident, charismatic and in-control, which is why everyone treats him as TheLeader, but when you look closer it’s increasingly clear that while he can talk a good game he’s never really committed to anything meaningful in his life before the study group and always takes what he thinks/assumes is the easy option out of a situation because it saves him from having to risk anything or actually take a stand about something.
* TheDulcineaEffect: Jeff decides he had a crush on Britta in the very first episode and spends the rest of the season pursuing her [[spoiler:until they hook up in the semi-finale.]]
* EmbarrassingNickname: “Tinkle Town”, when he was a kid.
** Some of his nicknames at Greendale (Forehead, Mr. Insecure, Seacrest) aren’t particularly flattering either.
* EvenTheGuysWantHim
* FauxFluency: Pretending to be a [[BavarianFireDrill “board-certified Spanish tutor”]] from the very first episode. This is lampshaded by Annie: “What board certifies a tutor?”
* FencePainting: Yet ''another'' part of his MO, most notable in [[Recap/CommunityS3E14PillowsAndBlankets “Pillows and Blankets”]].
* ForeheadOfDoom: This feature has been brought up several times when insulting him.
-->'''Jeff:''' My forehead's not ''that'' big?\\
''[The others make non-committal noises]''\\
'''Troy:''' It’s not small.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Phlegmatic
* FreezeFrameBonus: In [[Recap/CommunityS2E02AccountingForLawyers “Accounting for Lawyers”]], the email [[spoiler:Alan]] sent to the bar association that got Jeff disbarred in the first place reveals his middle name is Tobias.
* FreudianExcuse: Jeff drastically changed his image and attitude after a brutal lashing at foosball—a loss so bad that young Jeff actually wet himself—by a bully [[spoiler:who turns out to be Shirley]] when he was 10 years old.
** His parents’ divorce led to him choosing his [[AmoralAttorney future line of work]] because he wanted to be unafflicted by emotional vulnerabilities. His problems with commitment most likely stem from the same root.
* GentleGiant: When he’s not being a Jerkass.
* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Inverted; Jeff, a self-centred and emotionally closed-off {{Jerkass}}, seems to be good at seducing women when he wants to, but if Britta (the only member of the study group who has actually had sex with him) is to be believed, he's not actually very good in bed.
* HardWorkHardlyWorks: Averted (despite his best efforts) and {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d.
-->'''Jeff:''' The funny thing about being smart is that you can get through most of life without having to do any work.
** Often falls into the trap of LaboriousLaziness despite recognizing and lampshading this tendency of his (“I’m always willing to go the extra mile to avoid doing something”).
* TheHero
** TheLeader: A mixture of a Type IV and Type II, though the Type II fades in and out at times.
** GuileHero
** DecoyProtagonist: His role as the lone viewpoint character lasts maybe halfway into the first season and rapidly diminishes from there.
*** Season 3 presents a bit of a {{Deconstruction}} of him; his more [[ToxicFriendInfluence negative traits, influences and effects]] on the group were increasingly the focus of the plots surrounding him, and the group as a whole generally seemed to be increasingly resistant to/intolerant of his usual tactics and behaviours. He’s also been revealed to be ''very'' messed up.
* HiddenDepths: It’s frequently made clear that beneath the smooth, confidently amoral charmer, there’s basically a wounded and lonely ten-year-old trying to build a shell around himself. To a lesser degree, despite his surface disdain for the geek culture exemplified by Troy and Abed he’s very good at spotting Abed’s pop culture references and, according to “Home Economics”, apparently collected ''Spider-Man'' comics, and is shown to both own (in Comparative Religion) and play (in Intro to Political Science) guitar . A lot of his vanity also stems from deep-seated body image issues, and he once admitted that he was afraid of being fat because he believed that if he was fat no one would like him.
* {{Hipster}}: Jeff tends to occupy the ‘vain, self-centered and obsessed with being the coolest-yet-most-aloof person in the room’ part of the stereotype.
-->'''Jeff:''' [[HypocriticalHumor Hipster! Come on, would a hipster wear $300 jeans from Italy?]]
* HotGuysAreBastards: He’s getting (a bit) better, but he still has a tendency to use his looks as an excuse for being a jerk.
* {{Hypocrite}}: His aloof sense of smug superiority towards Greendale and almost everyone around him can take on this edge when you remember that he's a failed lawyer who's reduced to having to attend a crummy community college in order to qualify for the degrees he falsified; objectively speaking, he's just as much a loser as everyone around him that he looks down on.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: It’s often suggested that underneath his confidence, charm and superior attitudes to his friends and Greendale in general, Jeff has some very deep-seated self-esteem issues.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Jeff clearly thinks he’s the centre of the universe and that everything revolves around him, and can get very edgy when someone suggests otherwise.
* {{Jerkass}}: His default setting. While the study group has enabled him to gradually develop and display a heart of gold, he originally wasn’t very nice at all, and can occasionally regress.
** JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Almost on every episode he is in when he has to rescue the group from their hijinks. Lampshaded by Britta in “Modern Warfare”. In fact, it can be argued that this trope is Reconstructed with Jeff. He seems to have fully evolved (if that can be considered character evolution) into a spot-on depiction of this trope by the end of season 3.
*** In season 3 we are shown literally what is in his heart: [[ShipTease Annie]], [[AllMenArePerverts Annie’s breasts]], an opulent house, liquor, expensive cars, gambling, his cell phone, [[PetTheDog a golden retriever]], and a Hollywood actress. He settles on having a drink.
* LaboriousLaziness: He works surprisingly hard at being lazy.
* LikeFatherLikeSon: There are quite a few similarities between Jeff and his father (both are emotionally guarded/stunted, narcissistic, charismatic, and both have run their share of cons).
* LoonyFriendsImproveYourPersonality: Although it’s played with, in that it’s gradually revealed that as much as he might try to deny or hide it, he’s just as loony as the rest of them in many ways.
* ManipulativeBastard: He’s getting much worse at this over time, due to CharacterDevelopment. His skills started failing him right around when he came to Greendale.
* MeaningfulName: His last name is Winger, and he’s spent his adult life, well, [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught winging]] [[HardWorkHardlyWorks it]].
* MementoMacGuffin: Jeff has kept his father’s [[spoiler:boxing gloves]].
* MommyIssues: His mother praised him too much and now he has trouble accepting failure.
* TheMovieBuff: Nowhere near Abed, of course, but he does pick on most of Abed’s references and displays a higher than average amount of movie knowledge. {{Justified|Trope}} in that he was practically raised by TV.
* MrFanservice:
** He has quite a few {{Shirtless Scene}}s.
*** And then [[Recap/CommunityS1E17PhysicalEducation there’s the pool match]] …
** He’s actually very much aware of his status as this.
-->“I discovered a new back muscle to work out. Ladies, you’ll thank me come tank top season.”
** Deconstructed however; he's very handsome and knows it, but his vanity and self-centredness mean that, if Britta is to be believed, he's not actually that great as a sexual partner.
* {{Narcissist}}: Often discussed in-universe. Thankfully, his experiences at Greendale improve him somewhat.
--> "I'm Jeff Winger, and, if I had my choice, I would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with."
* NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught: He runs basically the entire spectrum of amorality tropes.
** Lampshaded by Jeff in “Digital Estate Planning” when Gilbert cheats.
--->''You’re cheating! Which I have no problem with, except you’re getting caught, and that’s not cool!''
* NotSoAboveItAll: He may think of himself as the OnlySaneMan, but in reality he’s had his share of crazy moments too and will occasionally join in with Troy and Abed’s antics.
* NotSoDifferent: It’s often made clear that Jeff and Pierce are not quite so different as Jeff would like to believe, and that Pierce is essentially what a future version of Jeff will look like if he doesn’t improve his ways and character.
* OlderThanTheyLook: It's revealed in "G.I. Jeff" that [[spoiler:he's 40 as of that episode.]]
* OneHeadTaller: At 6’4”, [[HugeGuyTinyGirl he towers over Annie and Britta]]. And the rest of the study group (save Pierce).
* OnlySaneMan: Jeff likes to think and act like he’s this, and it’s initially played more-or-less straight, but it’s gradually subverted over the course of the series when it becomes apparent that he’s in many ways more messed up than any of his wackier friends.
* PermaStubble: In season 3 and onward, although he does spend the occasional episode clean-shaven.
* PhysicalScarsPsychologicalScars: When recounting the ways he was traumatized by his father leaving the family, Jeff recounts an incident when he cut himself with scissors in order to fake appendicitis. (See AttentionWhore above.)
* ThePreciousPreciousCar: His Lexus.
* PrecisionFStrike: Jeff is the only character to swear (censored, of course) in the two documentary episodes.
-->'''Jeff''': What are you doing?
-->'''Abed''': Shooting a documentary on Changnesia.
-->'''Jeff''': Oh, for fuck's sake!
* TheReveal: The person he’s constantly texting is [[spoiler:nobody]].
* SanitySlippage: Caused by Rich’s perfection and hearing Pierce’s news about his father visiting him.
* SecretRelationship: With Prof. Slater in Season 1 and with Britta in Season 2.
* SecularHero: [[Recap/CommunityS1E12ComparativeReligion He’s agnostic]], much to the collective derision of the study group.[[note]]Everyone else has definitively made up their minds about whatever gods may or may not exist: Annie is Jewish, Abed is Muslim, Shirley is Christian (specifically Baptist), Troy's a Jehovah’s Witness, Britta's an atheist, and Pierce belongs to a cult he calls “Reformed Neo-Buddhism”.[[/note]]
* SelectiveObliviousness: When it comes to his treatment of Pierce. In his arguments with Annie about him, Jeff frequently takes the position that Pierce is just fundamentally a {{Jerkass}}, whereas Annie makes the case that it's only because people are always treating him poorly that he acts out. It is perhaps worth noting that out of the study group, Jeff is the most unrepentantly snide, mean-spirited and dismissive of Pierce and treats him poorly more frequently than the others, thus potentially explaining why he might not want to consider the possibility that it's his own treatment of Pierce that has caused most of the problems.
* SillyRabbitCynicismIsForLosers: Learning this is essentially his character arc; Jeff's cynical and self-serving outlook on life has ultimately left him lonely, miserable, riddled with psychological issues and as big a failure as anyone else at Greendale no matter how much he might try to deny it.
* ShoutOut: Dan Harmon has said that Winger is named for (and his personality modeled after) John Winger of ''Film/{{Stripes}}''.
* SmugSmiler: One of his default expressions is a incredibly self-satisfied smirk.
* SoreLoser: He basically storms off in a huff in "A Fistful of Paintballs" [[spoiler: when he's the first person to get eliminated in the final battle.]]
* StepfordSnarker: Feigns cynicism and indifference in order to hide his feelings.
* StopHavingFunGuy: In general, his rather snide and cooler-than-thou attitude and efforts to demonstrate aloof and ironic detachment at all times can sometimes mean that he can ruin the fun a bit (alternatively, he can seem to have it most at the expense of someone else). Seems especially the case in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E04RemedialChaosTheory Remedial Chaos Theory]]” [[spoiler:where the timeline resulting in him going to get the pizza is ultimately the one were everyone ends up having the most fun]].
* TallDarkAndSnarky
* TeamDad: Reluctantly. It also adds a level of Electra complex to his flirtation with Annie, which Jeff finds somewhat disturbing.
** PapaWolf: Despite being rude and dismissive towards his friends on a regular basis, he’s very protective of them whenever things get ugly or dangerous.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: His leadership isn’t always for the best, and he can be a rather negative force in the group and toward his friends at times.
* UnknownRival: He instantly assumes Rich is just pretending to be nice and drives himself crazy trying to prove it, insisting that he doesn’t care the whole time. Then there’s the Black Rider, who has no idea why this guy with the big forehead is obsessed with being more handsome than him.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Not a complete jerk, but leans towards the {{Jerkass}} side of DeadpanSnarker, and most of his problems are his own fault. Pointed out in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E01Anthropology101 Anthropology 101]]”:
-->'''Abed:''' I can tell life from TV, Jeff. TV makes sense; it has structure, logic, rules, and likable leading men. In life, we have this. We have you.
* WhiteGuilt: After Jeff and Troy find out their new friend Joshua was a blatant racist, Jeff offers to buy Troy frozen yogurt as his white guilt was driving him nuts.
* WhiteMaleLead: Out of two black people, an Arabic guy, an Asian guy, and three women on the cover, the main character ends up being the white guy. Although the series has become a lot more of an ensemble piece over time.
** To be fair to the show, Joel [=McHale=] was the cast member with the most TV credits to his name (save for Chevy Chase, who—not being the main character at all—was given the AndStarring credit).
* WorthlessForeignDegree: The reason Jeff is in community college is that [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfjYaivKGJ8 his Bachelor’s degree is one of these]]. Formerly provided the page quote for this trope.
-->'''Duncan:''' I thought you had a Bachelor’s from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University Columbia]].\\
'''Jeff:''' Well, now I have to get one from America.
%%
%% * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
%% Stop editing this trope. Duncan is referring to Columbia (the university), not to Colombia (the country). The joke is that Jeff actually has a Worthless Foreign Degree from ColOmbia, but that Duncan thought it was from ColUmbia. It is a pun using Columbia and Colombia as homophones. One is a highly regarded college in New York; the other is a nation in South America.
%% * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
%%
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Britta Perry]]
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Screen_shot_2011-05-29_at_2_41_02_PM_6765.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:300:This may shock you, but I come from a long line of wives and mothers.]]
Played by GillianJacobs.
[[GranolaGirl A passionate but inept political activist]], [[StrawFeminist feminist]], anarchist cat owner and psychology student, who, although generally well meaning, tends to eagerly latch on to particular causes with more enthusiasm (and [[SoapboxSadie obnoxious self-righteousness]]) than ability.
* ActorAllusion: Jeff and Chang laughing about Cherry Daiquiri, and then talking to Britta. (Gillian Jacobs played Cherry Daiquiri in the movie version of ''Literature/{{Choke}}''.)
* {{Adorkable}}: Gillian Jacobs describes Britta (and herself) with this exact word in one of the season 3 commentaries.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: She seems to have quite the thing for damaged goods, jerks and weirdos; subject to a process of {{Deconstruction}} in that it’s made clear that this is due to severe self-esteem issues on her part, and she initiates these relationships as a self-destructive way of validating her own lack of self-worth.
-->'''Troy:''' What don’t you get about this? Britta likes guys who are mean to her. She doesn’t like herself.
* BattleCry: “Britta for the win!”
* BerserkButton: Britta likes boys, and she DOESN’T like when they’re mean to her, and she DOESN’T like when they stop kissing her and start kissing one of her friends.
* BetterAsFriends: With Jeff, as mentioned above.
** [[spoiler:And later with Troy.]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Professor Slater's Veronica for Jeff's Archie in the beginning.
** Later becomes the Veronica to Annie's Betty also for Jeff's Archie.
** The Archie for Jeff's Veronica and Troy's Betty.
* BookDumb[=/=]GeniusDitz: Of a sort, at least; while her knowledge of psychological theory is shown to be quite lacking and her over-eagerness to apply this flawed knowledge makes her the subject of derision, she is often shown to actually be quite insightful about pinpointing people’s issues and what they should do to address them. Unfortunately, because her flawed theoretical knowledge makes her sound like an idiot, people (particularly Jeff) are often inclined to dismiss her advice out of hand when perhaps they shouldn’t.
* BreakTheHaughty: Like Jeff, Britta tends to have a rather high opinion of herself. Again like Jeff, many of the plots involving her tend to involve knocking her off her high horse as humiliatingly as possible.
* ButtMonkey: If it’s not Pierce, it’s Britta. Per Troy, she’s the AT&T of people.
* BuffySpeak
* TheCastShowoff: She shows off her dancing skills in [[Recap/CommunityS1E14InterpretiveDance Interpretive Dance]].
* CatchPhrase: “BRITTA FOR THE WIN!” and “Duh doy!”
** “I ''lived'' in UsefulNotes/{{New York|City}}.”
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: In her earliest appearances, she was a much more intelligent, snarky, [[MarySue "perfect"]] woman who often deserved her "high horse" standing because of her moral or intellectual standing (although not always; the character was just as frequently exposed as being something of a {{hypocrite}} at times). By season 2, though, these aspects of her character were gone without a trace, and she had become the more chilled out (though occasionally a Liberal Strawman) version of her that persisted through the rest of the show. The standing explanation is that Gillian Jacobs greatly prefers to play oddball wacky characters over morally superior characters, and negotiated to make her character more "fun", at the expense of the character's dignity. This also contributed to her persistent status as the series ButtMonkey.
* CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority: Often exaggerated and PlayedForLaughs. Her [[Recap/CommunityS2E14AdvancedDungeonsAndDragons D&D moniker]] was even “Britta the Needlessly Defiant”.
* TheCynic: While not quite on Jeff's levels, she has a rather pestimistic view toward many things.
* DeadpanSnarker: Almost as snarky as Jeff.
* TheDitherer: Played with, but in a more straightforward fashion than Jeff: like him, on the surface she seems committed to her various causes and has a very forceful, loud personality, but it quickly becomes apparent that she’s not nearly as dedicated as she wants other people to believe she is, and most of her loudness is bluster designed to conceal the fact that she can’t really manage to get things together and take responsibility for her life.
* DoesNotLikeMen: A somewhat mild example; she definitely has and expresses some [[StrawFeminist rather unflattering]] views about the male gender as a whole, but it’s less that she hates men and can’t stand to be around them (indeed, she’s good friends with three of them [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and also knows Pierce]]), and more that her feminist views have managed to (erroneously) convince her that, as a woman, she’s inherently superior to them.
* DumbBlonde[=/=]TheDitz[=/=]BrainlessBeauty: [[CharacterizationMarchesOn Though she starts off as reasonably intelligent]], [[TookALevelInDumbass it fades over time]], and she falls significantly into this trope by season 3, to the point of becoming [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike birds of a feather]] with [[BookDumb Troy]].
* EruditeStoner
* EthicalSlut
* FormerTeenRebel: Used to be an activist who traveled the world and joined the Peace Corps before deciding to go BackToSchool, which explains her SoapboxSadie tendencies.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Melancholic
* FriendsWithBenefits: With Jeff in season 2.
* GiftedlyBad: As a photographer.
* GranolaGirl: She was clearly one before entering the show, but snarkiness has turned her into more of a StrawFeminist.
-->'''Britta:''' I’m a vegetarian.\\
'''Troy:''' [[SarcasmMode Wow. Shocker.]]
* TheGrinch: In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas]]”, her rather smug and snide dismissals of the trappings of the festive season, such as Christmas songs, see her come off as a bit of a killjoy.
* HellBentForLeather: Was once referred to as the girl with “the infinite supply of leather jackets”. The thread of Britta's hypocrisy is reflected in her attempt to look like a sexy bad ass in animal skins while professing proudly not to eat them. Eventually she undergoes a wardrobe makeover sans leather jackets symbolic of her being less hypocritical and perhaps less of a sexy bad-ass as well.
* HiddenDepths: Has a hidden talent for planning weddings. It upsets her as if that humiliated her as a feminist.
* {{Hipster}}: Like Jeff, much as she might try to deny it Britta is totally a hipster. In particular, she tends to occupy the ‘pretentious, smug and poorly informed left-winger’ aspect of the stereotype. And she’s apparently ''always'' been a hipster—for example, she deliberately tracked down [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes VHS bootlegs]] of ''[[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rebop_(TV_series) Rebop]]'' as a child.
* HollywoodAtheist
* HollywoodPsych: Despite her passion for her major, it’s pretty clear that her knowledge of psychology only ranges to this. This is done on purpose, to showcase how ignorant she is. [[{{Anvilicious}} And to remind viewers, yet again, how atrocious Greendale’s classes are.]]
* {{Hypocrite}}: Although the SoapboxSadie, [[TheDitz Ditz]] and GranolaGirl aspects of her character would be gradually heightened for comedy over time, hypocrisy has been an aspect of Britta’s character [[OlderThanTheyThink since the early days of the show]]—[[Recap/CommunityS1E02Spanish101 the second episode]] reveals that her championing of social justice causes is mainly for appearances and credibility points and she doesn’t really do anything towards them, and [[Recap/CommunityS1E05AdvancedCriminalLaw the fifth episode]] reveals that her trumpeting of honesty as being her big defining feature is a sham when [[spoiler:she admits to having cheated on a Spanish test]].
** Earlier '''''still''''', in the very first episode, Britta [[spoiler:conceals her smoking habit from Jeff until he catches her outside with a cigarette while running out to the football field]]. It’s especially funny because Jeff could easily have been the one to be found out in that scene.
** This is lampshaded in "[[Recap/CommunityS2E03ThePsychologyofLettingGo The Psychology of Letting Go]]", when Annie, having had to put up with an episode of snide self-righteousness from Britta about her efforts to appeal to guys, angrily points out that despite her posturing Britta obviously also cares about getting attention from men seeing as she wears stripper boots, eats celery and mustard for lunch and gets up "an hour early to ever so slightly curl [her] hair."
** As noted above, she proudly and smugly lauds her vegetarian practices over the other members of the study group while simultaneously owning "an infinite supply of leather jackets".
* HypocriticalHumor: Seeing as there’s a bit of a gulf between Britta’s beliefs and her actions, she tends to generate this kind of humor.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: Often when her obnoxious, SoapboxSadie façade is [[BreakTheHaughty broken down]], she reveals her vulnerable side, admitting she actually hates herself, even going as far as to compare herself unfavourably to cancer at one point. A lot of the things she does are to gain respect from others, especially the study group. In Season 3, she discovers a new method of trying to gain respect: touting the fact that she’s a psych major and (unsuccessfully) showing off her psych skills.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Britta tends towards being rather obnoxious, self-righteous and inept, but her heart is generally in the right place and it’s often made clear that she’d jump through fire for her friends.
* KindheartedCatLover: And her cats all seem to have an incredible range of illnesses and disabilities.
* KnowNothingKnowItAll: She presents herself as an experienced and enlightened woman-of-the-world, but isn’t nearly as well-informed as she believes herself to be or wants others to believe she is.
* TheLancer
* {{Malaproper}}: Has a tendency towards this; some examples are “edible complex” ([[OedipusComplex Oedipal Complex]]) and “rowboat cop” (''Franchise/RoboCop'').
* MeaningfulName: Britta is a rather brittle person, who puts on a tough, confident and self-impressed front but is really a rather unstable stew of neuroses and insecurities when you get past the surface. Pierce accidentally foreshadows this in the pilot by introducing her to Jeff ([[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment belatedly]]) as “Brittles”.
** Also, as Abed notes in "[[Recap/CommunityS1E21ContemporaryAmericanPoultry Contempoaray American Poultry]]", she [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brita compulsively filters herself]].
* MsFanservice: She has her moments.
* NoSocialSkills: Her reactions to certain situations tend to be inappropriate or just nonsensical. According to WordOfGod, this is why she plays a "malfunctioning robot" in "Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas".
* NotSoAboveItAll: It’s suggested a few times that, despite her StrawFeminist-like disdain for traditional women’s roles, gender binaries and their trappings (such as marriage) and her tendency to lord it over Shirley and Annie when they display interests that align to this, she’s not quite as detached from them as she likes to believe, most notably in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E11UrbanMatrimonyAndTheSandwichArts Urban Matrimony and the Sandwich Arts]]”, she displays a surprising innate and instinctive talent for floral arrangement and wedding preparation.
* NotSoDifferent: With Shirley. Although they often come from different ends of the spectrum when it comes to their religious and political beliefs and often clash because of it, they’re more alike than they think—in particular, they both tend to get very self-righteous about their particular standards ([[HypocriticalHumor often without justification]]) and will often drive the other members of the group up the wall with their moralizing when they get up on their respective high horses.
** The first season onwards also makes it pretty clear that as much as she disdains Jeff for his superficial, selfish and self-centred nature, she is in many ways just as superficial, selfish and self-centered.
* ObliviousToLove: She was unaware of Troy’s crush on her for quite sometime.
* PersonAsVerb: InUniverse: To "Britta" something means to screw it up, usually by making a stupid mistake. Lampshaded in "Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps":
-->'''Jeff:''' You probably just Britta'd the test results.\\
'''Britta:''' Are people using my name as slang to mean "make a small mistake?"
** Deconstructed in "Herstory as Dance"; during his WhatTheHellHero speech to Jeff about his {{Jerkass}} behaviour to Britta, Pierce points out that Jeff persistently using a friend's name as a synonym for screwing up and failure is a good indicator that Jeff's actually a pretty crappy friend. Humbled by this, in his congratulatory text to Britta after the concert she organises goes well Jeff makes a point of saying that she "Britta'd the hell out of it".
* PhraseCatcher: "You’re the worst!"
* PlayingGertrude: Though not obscenely so. In the first episode (which originally aired on September 17, 2009) Abed tells Jeff that her 29th birthday is coming up in October. Gillian Jacobs ''did'' have her birthday—her ''27th'' birthday—on October 13, 2009.
* ProgressivelyPrettier: Britta was several steps up from ugly to begin with and whether or not it was intentional is unknown, but gets more and more beautiful as the show passes, reflecting how she put her life back on track at Greendale.
* PurelyAestheticGlasses
* [[spoiler:RapeAsBackstory: While it may not have been rape, it has been implied that she was molested by a man in a dinosaur costume when she was 11. With the way the show has spun it, it seems like it may also count as BlackComedyRape.]]
* ReallyGetsAround: At least, it’s frequently implied that she does.
* [[spoiler:RelationshipUpgrade: With Troy between Season 3 and 4.]]
* SecretRelationship: With Jeff in Season 2.
* SmugSmiler: She can look very, ''very'' smug when she gets self-righteous about something. [[SoapboxSadie Which is often.]]
* SoapboxSadie: Parodied; she will latch on to ''any'' excuse to jump onto her high horse about something, especially if the something in question is something that is no longer as radical or controversial as she thinks it is. This tends to lead to her making a fool of herself.
--> '''Annie:''' You're anti-wedding now?
--> '''Jeff:''' No, she's just pro-anti.
--> '''Britta:''' No to everything you both said!
* SoUnfunnyItsFunny: The kind of humor Britta usually provides.
* StraightMan: She has a reputation as a buzz-kill.
* StrawFeminist: It's frequently made clear that her understanding of feminism is flawed and that she mainly tends to use her feminist causes as a way of feeling superior over others.
* SugarAndIcePersonality
* TeamMom: Juggles this with Shirley. Britta tends to be the group’s “buzz-kill” and has become more concerned with their mental well-beings since becoming a Psych Major.
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The tomboy to Annie’s girly girl.
* TookALevelInDumbass: Lampshaded by Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E18CourseListingUnavailable Course Listing Unavailable]]”:
-->'''Jeff:''' You seemed smarter than me when I met you.
** And again in "[[Recap/CommunityS5E01Repilot Repilot]]":
--->'''Jeff:''' Britta, when we met, you were an eclectic anarchist. How did you become the group's airhead?
--->'''Britta:''' (''confused'') Thank you?
* {{Tsundere}}: Her actions seems to imply she’s a Type B tsundere, especially towards Jeff.
* UnfortunateNames: “What is she, a water filter?” “Can you imagine living with that?”
** And she doesn’t even realize that.
* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: With Jeff.
* WeaknessTurnsHerOn: A self-admitted example. [[ShipTease She even falls for Troy]] when he makes up a story of being molested as a child.
* WomenAreWiser: None of the characters is a flawless human being, but she tries to act, invoke and otherwise claim this trope (particularly for herself) more than the others, which tends to lead to HypocriticalHumor when reality or her own character flaws trip her up and prove her wrong—usually immediately after. She does admit at one point that she doesn’t really consider herself to be so deep down, however, and her heart is generally in the right place even if there’s a gulf between her opinion of herself and the reality.
* YaoiFangirl
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Pierce Hawthorne]]
[[quoteright:287:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pierce-picture_329x494_8839.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:287:Streets ahead!]]
Played by Creator/ChevyChase.
The oldest member of the study group; a local curmudgeon and a wealthy but lonely tycoon who attends Greendale primarily to find company and give himself something to do. [[SmallNameBigEgo Not nearly as smart or popular as he thinks]], he tends to act inappropriately and thus come across as more-or-less inadvertently racist, sexist and buffoonish.
* AccidentalMisnaming: Pierce routinely mispronounces Abed’s name as “Ay-bed”.
* ActorAllusion: Pierce’s father's name is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Chase Cornelius]], and he lives on “Cranesworth Road”.
* AdamWesting: Up until the beginning of 2011 or so, Chevy Chase was absolutely notorious for being difficult to work with. He briefly turned it around, but Pierce’s status as the group’s in-universe [[TheScrappy Scrappy-Doo]] and general {{Jerkass}}ness can be seen as him essentially playing who he thinks he used to be.
** Alternatively, this could be seen as the producers of the show lampooning Chase, since several behind-the-scenes reports (most notably the feud between Chase and Dan Harmon, although the same reports in that case also suggested that Harmon himself wasn’t exactly blameless in the situation either) have suggested that Chase isn’t exactly the easiest person to work with or the most popular person on set.
*** And in November 2012, Chase formally severed his affiliation with ''Community'', requiring the writers to graduate Pierce from Greendale in the Season 4 finale.
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: An in-universe example; the characters themselves go backwards and forwards on whether Pierce is just an irredeemable {{Jerkass}} or whether it’s the fact that people treat him like a fool that makes him act out that way. Jeff usually takes the former interpretation, Annie the latter.
* AmbiguouslyGay: He drops a few hints here and there.
* AndStarring: With Chevy Chase.
* BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork: He considers himself the guy who does or says what everyone else wants, but isn’t willing, to.
* BerserkButton: A double subversion occurs in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E02AccountingForLawyers Accounting for Lawyers]]” when Pierce fails to guess another man’s BerserkButton, but in fact has just mentioned his own—his hair loss.
* BlackBestFriend: One thing that gets Pierce out of his suicidal funk is that he has “a young African-American friend” (namely, Troy).
* BondageIsBad: While he’s not evil, he is a DirtyOldMan, and the fact that he has a “secret gym” in his mansion only reinforces this image.
* BrickJoke: Upon season 5, we find out he actually knew (or paid a lot of money to) Levar Burton.
* ButtMonkey: If it’s not Britta, it is Pierce who typically serves this role within the study group, as lampshaded in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E22TheArtOfDiscourse The Art of Discourse]]”.
* TheCastShowoff: Performs a couple songs accompanying himself on keyboard.
* CatchPhrase: Tries to force “streets ahead” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E21ContemporaryAmericanPoultry Contemporary American Poultry]]”.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: By season 3 due to senility.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: So much. So very very much.
* ADateWithRosiePalms: [[spoiler:Doing too much of this is what ultimately kills him.]]
** [[spoiler: DeathByIrony]]: [[spoiler: The reason he did so much of it is because he left each member of the study group a cylinder of his frozen sperm in his will. After filling up all the cylinders, he died of dehydration.]]
* DependingOnTheWriter: He’s a relatively harmless bumbling man in some episodes, an unapologetic {{Jerkass}} in others.
* DirtyOldMan: To wit, after the CrackPairing on the [[Series/{{Community}} main page]]:
-->'''Pierce:''' ''(to everybody in the group)'' So, just to be clear, I don’t have a shot with any of you?\\
''(everybody shudders and walks away)''
* DisproportionateRetribution: A specialty of his.
** “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” takes this to epic levels.
** “[[Recap/CommunityS2E16IntermediateDocumentaryFilmmaking Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking]]” is all about his complicated revenge.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E17IntroToPoliticalScience Intro to Political Science]]” he got into the election for student body president just to publicly humiliate Vicki in every way imaginable for not lending him a pencil.
* TheDitz: A particularly nasty example.
** GeniusDitz: He’s actually a competent businessman and a skilled orator.
* DontYouDarePityMe: Pierce hates the thought of anyone pitying him for any reason. Unfortunately, he’s also so desperate for attention that rather than accept people’s pity, he’ll instead lash out in more negative ways to the point that pity ends up being the ''last'' thing anyone feels for him, even if he genuinely warrants it.
* DraftDodging: Fled to Canada to avoid fighting in the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar.
* DrivenByEnvy: On many occasions, when he feels left out of the group’s activities.
* DumbassHasAPoint: He shows [[IncrediblyLamePun piercing and penetrating insight]] every once in a while.
* EmbarrassingFirstName: '''Piercinald''' Anastasia Hawthorne.
* EmbarrassingMiddleName: Anastasia, according to “[[Recap/CommunityS3E06AdvancedGay Advanced Gay]]”.
* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: It’s revealed that he often talks to his mother about how he feels Jeff bullies him, and tells her he has a GirlfriendInCanada.
* ForTheEvulz
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Sanguine
* TheFriendNobodyLikes
* {{Flanderization}}: Into a massive racist. Combining with OutOfFocus as shown below and you get a character who now does little more than spout racist one-liners before shuffling out of focus again, which was reportedly one of the main reasons Chevy Chase was increasingly frustrated with and dismissive of the show.
* HiddenDepths: In [[Recap/CommunityS2E24ForAFewPaintballsMore the season 2 finale]]:
-->'''Pierce:''' You know I’ve been coming to this school for twelve years? I—I’ve never been friends with anyone here for more than a semester. Probably for the same reason I’ve been married seven times. I guess I assume eventually I’ll get rejected, so I, you know, test people, push them until they prove me right. It’s a sickness, I admit it. But, this place has always accepted me, sickness and all. This place accepted all of ''you''. Sickness and all. It’s worth thinking about.
* InnocentBigot: Regularly says things the other characters find offensive. [[RacistGrandma Generational]] [[FairForItsDay differences]] play a role.
* {{Jerkass}}: More and more.
** JerkWithAHeartOfGold: A ''very'' minor example; there are occasionally glimpses of someone more likeable, decent and sympathetic within Pierce, but they’re buried almost impenetrably deep within a crust and outer core of insufferable {{Jerkass}}. In general, if anyone’s going to reveal Pierce’s nicer side, it’s Annie.
* KavorkaMan: He’s been divorced seven times. This means ''seven different women agreed to marry him in the first place''.
** SerialSpouse
* [[spoiler:KilledOffForReal]]: As of Season 5.
* TheKlutz: He manages to fall out of Jeff’s chair just by sitting in it, as well as getting the most laughs at Abed’s bad movie night by tripping and knocking over Chang’s popcorn.
** ThePratfall
* TheLoad: Whenever the group does a group activity. Subverted in "Basic Human Anatomy", when he does the group's History project by himself after they all left him behind to go have their episode plots.
* ManipulativeBastard: Best showed in “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”, where he makes the rest of the group paranoid for ostracizing him.
* ManChild: Bordering on PsychopathicManChild.
* MistakenForRacist: Despite his obvious lack of sensitivity, there are times when he genuinely doesn’t intend to be offensive.
* NotSoDifferent: Despite their obvious disdain for him, Pierce arguably has this going on with all the other members of the study group even if they don't want to acknowledge it:
** It's most prominent with Jeff, as it's often suggested that Pierce is essentially what an older version of Jeff will look like if Jeff doesn't improve his ways;
** Like Britta, Pierce often takes over-the-top offence at quasi-imagined slights and has some questionable political views (and understanding);
** He shares Abed's social ineptness and tendency to say whatever's on his mind regardless of who it might offend;
** He's intensely over-competitive and determined to win whatever the cost (even if it risks ruining his relationships with the people around him), like Annie. They also share a history of substance abuse;
** Shirley is often offended by his ignorance, intolerance and bigotry, but she can often be just as ignorant, intolerant and even bigoted;
** Like Troy, he's immature, a bit egotistical, and not very intelligent.
* TheObiWannabe: Fortunately, it’s pretty obvious to the rest of the study group from the beginning.
** [[spoiler:His [[TheCameo cameo]] in the Season 5 opener plays with this, when Jeff encounters what initially appears to be Pierce's sprit telling him, "Looks as if you've lost your way"... but it just turns out to be a hologram directing students to the on-campus "Pierce Hawthorne Museum of Gender Sensitivity and Sexual Potency".]]
* OddFriendship: Pierce and... anyone, really.
* OutOfFocus[=/=]SatelliteCharacter: As time has gone on, Pierce has gotten less and less focus to the point of being a point of contention for Chevy Chase in real life.
* PlayingAgainstType: Most of Chevy Chase’s more popular characters have tended to be smooth, suave and the smartest (or at least wittiest) guy in the room. Pierce Hawthorne? Not so much.
* PutOnABus: Graduates with Jeff at the end of Season 4. Season 5 reveals that he's banned from Greendale.
** [[spoiler:BusCrash: He's revealed to have died off-screen in [[Recap/CommunityS5E03BasicInterglutealNumismatics "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics"]].]]
* RacistGrandpa: Naturally.
** Although unlike his father, who is actively malicious in his racism, Pierce [[InnocentBigot just doesn’t know better]].
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior
* SeniorSleepCycle: In “Remedial Chaos Theory”.
* SmallNameBigEgo
* TokenEvilTeammate: From time to time.
* TookALevelInJerkass: In season 2, he starts engaging in self-alienating behavior while simultaneously castigating the others for alienating him; this culminates in the events of “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” “[[Recap/CommunityS2E23AFistfulOfPaintballs A Fistful of Paintballs]],” and “For a Few Paintballs More.” In season 3, that level of jerkass seems to have receded, returning him to the sympathetic bumbler of season 1.
* TotallyRadical: His attempt to coin the phrase “streets ahead”.
* TroubledSympatheticBigot: Can come across as this. Pierce’s inappropriateness, overzealous creativity, and pathological need to be accepted at all costs are all rooted in frustrations getting attention from his father and his fear that his age is now isolating himself from the rest of the study group.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist
* WellDoneSonGuy: Revealed as one in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E13CelebrityPharmacology Celebrity Pharmacology]].”
* YuriFan: Or at least he thinks GirlOnGirlIsHot.
** May be a {{subversion}}, as despite his tendency toward perversion, in “Advanced Gay” he says that he hates lesbians.
** Although he did have that oddly supportive letter for Britta after she “came out” for “dating a lesbian”.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Abed Nadir]]
[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/abed_7105.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:300: [[MetaGuy I have a profile pic now.]] Cool. Coolcoolcool.]]
Played by Danny Pudi.
A media-aware and pop-culture-obsessed film student who is either [[AmbiguousDisorder suffering from an unspecific personality disorder]] or is just [[CloudCuckoolander very eccentric]]. He tends to view the world around him [[GenreSavvy as if he and his friends were the main characters in a weekly television sitcom about a group of oddball students]]. As such, he tends to make [[LampshadeHanging frequent references, comparisons]] [[InvokedTrope and ‘homages’]] to various TV shows and movies. Legend has it that Abed himself wrote the entirety of tvtropes.com. Only two people have ever seen this website: you and Abed.
* ActorSharedBackground: Abed is half-Polish, as is his actor, Danny Pudi.
* {{Adorkable}}: Oh so very much. In his usual GenreSavvy way, he's actually aware that he comes across as this and that girls are attracted to him because of it.
* AmbiguousDisorder: He is incredibly fascinated with films and television and is a bit obsessed with projecting their tropes onto real life. He also has a strange, somewhat sterile demeanor, doesn’t seem to know (or even when corrected, care about) how to go about certain social situations, and is face-blind. He loses his cool whenever there’s any kind of unfamiliarity in his life, even if it’s something like having the engine of his Dreamatorium being tampered with or changing the clocks for daylight savings. The characters seem to be unsure of whether or not Abed is showing symptoms of some kind of mental disorder, or is just really quirky. His parents have attempted treatment, if the syringe clipart in [[Recap/CommunityS1E03IntroductionToFilm his student film]] is anything to go by.
** This is lampshaded in “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” in which his ‘title’ is Abed the Undiagnosable.
** Also lampshaded in the rap song in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E10RegionalHolidayMusic Regional Holiday Music]]”: “On the spectrum? None of your business”.
** However, in the pilot episode, Jeff explicitly tells him he has Asperger’s syndrome. It comes off more as an angry retort than a statement of fact.
* AuthorAvatar: WordOfGod again; DanHarmon has said that he has eventually come to believe that Abed is the character that best represented him. [[spoiler:Make what you will of the reveal of Abed as the OnlySaneMan in "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps", which came after Harmon had first publicly said that he felt this way.]]
* AwesomenessByAnalysis: He’s so GenreSavvy that he can predict, word for word, how anyone in the group will respond to a given situation.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS2E08CooperativeCalligraphy Cooperative Calligraphy]]”, it was revealed that in this fashion he [[spoiler:figured out the menstrual cycles of the women in the group]].
** PropheciesAreAlwaysRight: Any prophecy he makes in this fashion ''will'' be accurate.
*** Later episodes seem to be suggesting that Abed is not as accurate as he thinks, however; “[[Recap/CommunityS3E16VirtualSystemsAnalysis Virtual Systems Analysis]]” suggests that his analysis is ultimately affected by his insecurities and his personal relationships with the group. In that episode, his predictions lead him to conclude that Britta and Troy’s lunch date will go poorly; this is a reflection of his underlying concern that he will be gradually excluded, however, and the date in fact goes very well.
* BadassBookworm
* BatmanGambit: A prime example would be him manipulating Jeff and Britta in order to finish a student film, which would then help him patch things up with his father.
* BollywoodNerd: Spoofed. One of his nicknames is “{{Film/Slumdog|Millionaire}}”.
* BreakoutCharacter
** Teased a few times:
--->'''Troy:''' Do you just constantly have your own little side adventures?\\
'''Abed:''' Yep.\\
'''Troy:''' [[BlatantLies … Me too.]]
* BrutalHonesty: Abed tends to deliver cutting analyses of people without any sort of sugary coat. It becomes a plot point in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E07AerodynamicsOfGender Aerodynamics of Gender]].”
* CannotConveySarcasm: He has to announce whenever he’s being sarcastic as well as announce when he’s finished.
* CatchPhrase: (points) “Cool. (beat) Coolcoolcool.”
* ChickMagnet: Abed has no problem attracting girls because he’s {{Adorkable}} and his aloofness reminds them of their DaddyIssues.
* CloudCuckoolander
* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: His encyclopedic command of tropes gives him the full-on power of prophecy. He shot a video where the study group bands together to stop Jeff from living out of his car … ''the week before it happened to the characters themselves''.
* DawsonCasting: Abed’s exact age is never specified, but he’s probably in his early twenties. Danny Pudi was 30 when the series began airing.
* {{Deconstruction}}: His problems and issues were a central focus in Season 3, along with the difficulties that his condition produced in enabling him to form connections with and empathize with others. [[spoiler:By the end of the season, he mentally snaps and admits that he does have problems and needs help.]]
** Taken further in season 5 after Troy's departure. Without his best friend around to indulge his childish behaviors, Abed's forced to interact more with other members of the group who are far less tolerable of his antics, and his reactions to their disapproval go beyond the usual deconstruction of his control freak tendencies into borderline JerkAss territory.
* DitzyGenius: There is no one who knows more about pop culture than Abed.
* TheEmpath: He predicts the way the other characters will act with eerie accuracy, thanks to his surprising insight which especially shows in the film about his dad.
* FakeNationality: Abed and his dad as Palestinians, or as any kind of Arab: Danny Pudi (Abed) is half-Indian and half-Polish (and grew up speaking Polish in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}), while Iqbal Theba (Abed’s dad) is Pakistani. The Arabic they speak in “Introduction to Film,” however, is real.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Melancholic
* FourthWallObserver: [[Recap/CommunityS2E05MessianicMythsAndAncientPeoples At one point]] he looks directly at the camera and says “This ''is'' the movie!” while someone sings “Abed!” in the background.
* GenreSavvy: His defining characteristic.
** As he says, talking about people like they’re in a TV show is his gimmick and that they “leaned pretty hard on that last week.” He then says that he “can lay low for an episode.” As mentioned above, this becomes DangerouslyGenreSavvy at times (oddly enough it is relatively rare that he is victim to WrongGenreSavvy).
** He’s even GenreSavvy about having an AmbiguousDisorder—he got out of a conversation with Chang where he was caught in a lie by pretending to ‘glitch’ in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E12AsianPopulationStudies Asian Population Studies]]”, making Chang go away in frustration.
--->'''Abed:''' Works every time.
* GeekPhysiques
* GiverOfLameNames: Self-confessed. Gems include Bing-Bong, Marrrrrrr (as Jeff observes, “Boy, you weren’t kidding”) and Hector the Well-Endowed (“I made that one with [[HoYay Troy in mind]]”).
* HeroicBlueScreenOfDeath
* HeterosexualLifePartners: With Troy.
* HiddenDepths: "Virtual Systems Analysis" reveals that he is deeply insecure about his place in the group. To elaborate, Annie tells him that his "simulations" in the Dreamitorium need to take other people's feelings into account (and she messes around with his mock-up "Dreamitorium engine" to reflect this change). This causes him to go into a HeroicBSOD and drag Annie into a "simulation" where other people's feelings are taken into account, from which he is noticably absent. Annie later finds him jammed into a simulated locker, where he reveals his fear that if he considers how the rest of the group feels, then he'll have to face the possibility that they don't actually want him around.
* HyperAwareness: See AwesomenessByAnalysis.
--->'''Abed:''' I'm used to being the only observer.
* [[InformedJudaism Informed Islam]]: Abed’s religion doesn’t really come up, except at Christmas or when Pierce wants to be [[RacistGrandpa Pierce.]]
* InnocentlyInsensitive
* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: Pierce routinely gets his name wrong, calling him “Ay-bed” (as in, “the Ay-rab”).
* TheLancer: During the paintball episodes, particularly in Season 2. In “For a Few Paintballs More”, he deliberately calls dibs on the “[[Franchise/StarWars Han]] [[LoveableRogue Solo]] [[TheLancer role]]”.
* LostInCharacter: For his walk-on role in ''Series/{{Cougartown}}''. Very, ''very'' lost.
* LovesMyAlterEgo: Annie has a tendency to swoon and show increased interest in Abed whenever he cosplays as [[Series/MadMen Don Draper]], [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]] or Franchise/{{Batman}}.
* [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Manic Pixie Dream Boy]]: Discussed in-universe; Troy describes him as “a magical, elf-like man who makes us all more magical by being near us”.
** Also a {{Deconstruction}}: his antics can be exhausting and irresponsible, and his odd outlook on life may stem from an AmbiguousDisorder.
* MetaGuy: Abed’s MediumAwareness and GenreSavvy LeaningOnTheFourthWall (if not outright [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaking it]]) is {{justified|Trope}} as him being a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} (or at least a GeniusDitz) with some degree of ObfuscatingStupidity or [[ObfuscatingInsanity Insanity]]—Britta worries in an early episode that he doesn’t know the difference between real life and television. In fact, he has transcended normal GenreSavvy into the realms of prophesy now that he is taking film classes. WildMassGuessing has postulated that he is either a patron of this site or [[MediumAwareness knows that he’s fictional]]. Examples can be found on [[Quotes/{{Community}} the Quotes page]].
** Lampshaded in “Anthropology 101”: Abed asks Shirley if she would “spin off with him” and she responds, “I don’t understand, is this you being meta?”
** WordOfGod from [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/community-creator-dan-harmon,45508/ this interview with creator Dan Harmon]] states that Abed will never directly break the FourthWall.
** That being said, there are a few times when it’s arguable he’s done so already. He sung a variation of the theme song in “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.” It’s almost like Abed can see the fourth wall out of the corner of his eye, and the only thing he can’t do is look into the camera and address the audience.
** From the same episode, as they walk through the valley where the plants sing Christmas carols, Pierce asks if it will be “expensive to walk though here,” to which Abed answers “No, these songs are all public domain.” That joke doesn’t even make sense out of the context of them knowing they’re in a TV show. Suffice to say, ''Community'' plays pretty fast and loose with the fourth wall.
*** But that’s the beauty of Abed—the joke does make sense if you believe Abed is such a Cloudcookoolander that he sometimes believes he’s a character in a TV series, and talks in a manner consistent with being one, when he isn’t (even though he is). Abed is a TV character who often has delusions that he is a TV character; this is part of his characterisation and it is possible for him to comment on it without breaking the fourth wall.
** In the “Twittersode” before the Season Two finale, Abed is the only one able to see that every character ends their tweets with a hashtag referencing the show itself.
--->'''[=AbedsTweets=]:''' Why do we keep typing “// #[=NBCCommunity=]?”\\
'''[=JeffWingerAtLaw=]:''' @[=AbedsTweets=] Nobody knows what you’re talking about. AGAIN.=]
** In “Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples” he [[AsideGlance looks at the camera]] saying “This is the movie.”
* MissingMom: Sadly he has one.
* MixedAncestry: Palestinian father, Polish mother.
* MotorMouth
* TheMovieBuff: And how!
* NerdsAreSexy: Despite [[NoSocialSkills a clear lack of social skills]], he seems to have little difficulty attracting women (he’s {{adorkable}} and [[DaddyIssues his aloofness subconsciously reminds them of their fathers]]). He has also made out with the hottest girl in school.
* NiceGuy
* NoSocialSkills
* OnlySaneMan: Played with; he definitely has some issues, but despite his eccentric way of looking at the world, Abed can sometimes come across as being more sensible, calm and down-to-earth than his supposedly more ‘normal’ friends. Seemingly confirmed in a literal way at the end of “[[Recap/CommunityS3E05HorrorFictionInSevenSpookySteps Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps]],” where it’s revealed that [[spoiler:Britta’s only psych test that ''didn’t'' come up with something absolutely dreadful was his.]]
** However, Season 3 reveals that Abed is quite fragile without the stabilizing presence of Troy, and is aware of the risk of being institutionalised if he loses his grip.[[spoiler: After trying to cut off Jeff’s arm, it’s hard to call him the only sane man.]]
* PassThePopcorn: Part of his MetaGuy shtick. He goes as far as giving cues to the players so they know how to proceed cinematically.
* PlatonicLifePartners: With Annie.
* PopCulturedBadass
* TheRainman:
** In his own words, “I know you guys all so well I can predict your behavior.”
** There’s a throwaway reference to ''Film/RainMan'' in “Physical Education” when Jeff spills a bag of bagels on the floor and Abed glances down at them briefly before saying, “Thirteen.”
** Pierce and Duncan have both referred to him as such.
** In “Pillows and Blankets”, the opening narration describes him as “unable to pay parking tickets or know left from right without mouthing the Pledge of Allegiance.”
** In “Virtual Systems Analysis”, Abed has a voiceover, “I am Abed Nadir, and I don’t know a lot of things everyone else knows,” while an analog clock (confirmed in “[[Recap/CommunityS3E17BasicLupineUrology Basic Lupine Urology]]”), a restaurant check, shoes with untied laces, and a pile of papers (possibly tax forms) float around.
** Abed’s Season 3 quirks are symptoms of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia dyscalculia]], most obviously his difficulty with analog clocks and left/right confusion. The disorder is characterized by difficulty with arithmetic, conflicting with the ''Rain Man'' reference from Season 1.
** Lampshaded in “Digital Estate Planning” when he becomes [[KissMeImVirtual rather fond]] of an NPC in the game they’re playing:
-->'''Britta:''' Abed, she’s a program.
-->'''Abed:''' People have said similar things about me.
-->'''Pierce:''' Uh oh, he’s playing the Rain Man card. Let’s bounce.
* RedOniBlueOni: The Blue to Troy's Red.
* ReferenceOverdosed: References are basically how he communicates with the world.
** In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E16CommunicationStudies Communication Studies]],” he gets drunk and is horrified to discover he can’t recall any shows or movies to reference. At one point, to keep up appearances, he just says “movie reference”.
* SarcasmBlind: Early Season 1. [[ItGetsBetter He gets better.]]
** He does tend to need to announce to everyone when he’s planning to or using sarcasm, however.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in “Advanced Criminal Law”:
-->'''Abed:''' Troy invented rap music, and he’s related to Danny Glover, and [[BarackObama President Obama]].\\
'''Troy:''' Hey man, that stuff I said this morning wasn’t true, I was just messing with you.\\
'''Abed:''' You were lying?\\
'''Troy:''' Yeah, as a joke. You’ve never had somebody mess with you before?\\
'''Abed:''' Yes, just kidding, no. Like that? … This isn’t a table. ''(Laughs)'' … That’s funny.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Sensitive Guy to Troy’s Manly Man.
* SpeaksInShoutouts
* StatOVision: How Abed sees the world.
* TheStoic: Easily the most patient of the group and least likely to get upset. He’s even unfazed by sitting through ''more than twenty-six hours'' of Duncan’s psychology experiment.
** However, Abed quickly loses his cool when something interferes with the order of his universe (changing his apartment, setting the clocks back, etc.). A danger sign is a continuous, high-pitched wail.
* TagalongKid: Although Annie and Troy are technically younger than he is. Doubles as the group’s [[TheSmartGuy Smart Guy]].
* TinMan
* TookALevelInJerkass: Season 3 saw him become a bit more ill-tempered and insulting to his friends than the first two seasons.
** And again in Season 5 after Troy leaves.
* TwoDecadesBehind: His 1980s references. Abed is aged somewhere between 21 and 27, which makes his constant ’80s references 10 to 20 years behind where they should be. Most of his references should be from TheNineties and the TurnOfTheMillennium. Obviously the reason is because Dan Harmon (born January 3, 1973) and his references are taken from the ’80s and early ’90s when he grew up and are transferred into his writing. The show has lampshaded this oddity; it’s often made clear that Abed is a fanatical consumer of pop culture in a way most people aren’t and that he goes to way greater lengths than most would in pursuit of it. The weirdest example is his encyclopaedic knowledge of ''Series/WhosTheBoss'' which (depending on the exact age of Abed) began when Abed wouldn’t have been born yet and ended before he had started preschool.
** Not necessarily weird, given his penchant for marathon-ing already finished TV shows.
* TheUnsmile: {{Averted|Trope}}. His most common expression is a dead pokerface, but on the couple of occasions when he does smile … it’s pretty adorable.
** Played enormously straight in “Remedial Chaos Theory”, though he’s obviously forcing it.
* VagueAge: He’s somewhere in his twenties, but where?
-->'''Jeff:''' Abed is an adult and a U.S. citizen … right?\\
'''Abed:''' (nods)
* WellDoneSonGuy: At first his traditionalist father is disappointed that he wants to study film instead of taking over the family falafel restaurant. He later changes his mind after seeing one of his son’s films.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Occasionally. It’s the closest he ever gets to being GenreBlind.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Shirley Bennett]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/community_s2_yvette_nicole_brown_002_7938.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:Oh, that’s nice!]]
Played by Yvette Nicole Brown.
A divorced housewife and mother who started attending business classes at the school following her divorce. [[TheFundamentalist A devout Christian]], she tends to see herself as [[TeamMom the group’s moral and spiritual compass and conscience]]—whether the group wants her to or not.
* ActorAllusion: Subverted by Yvette Nicole Brown in RealLife. On Mother’s Day 2012, she tweeted “Thanks for all the sweet Mother’s Day wishes—but I’m not a mom, I just play one on television.”
** Played straight when she mentions the movie poster with “[[Film/TheUglyTruth the heart over the man’s junk]]” in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E07IntroductionToStatistics Introduction to Statistics]]”. Yvette was in this movie.
* TheAlcoholic: Started drinking a lot after her divorce, and in the [[spoiler:darkest timeline]] as well.
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: All of her attempts toward romance after her divorce fail, including her memorable fling with the sexy dreadlocks guy in “Contemporary American Poultry”.[[spoiler: Abed proves to her that the only reason he hung around Shirley was because she fed him chicken fingers.]]
* TheAtoner: It’s implied on a few occasions that the strength of her religious faith has something to do with her guilt about her former alcoholism, and it’s outright stated that it has a lot to do with her being a bully as a twelve-year-old.
* BadassPreacher: Shirley is both the most religious member of the study group and the most prone to violence. She’s absolutely terrifying in “Pillows and Blankets”.
** She cosplayed as one of these during the second paintball game.
* BerserkButton: She is touchy about her age, her weight, and doesn’t particularly appreciate jibes about her religious beliefs either.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Shirley in general appears to have deep-seated rage issues underneath her saccharine-sweet exterior, as noted by Jeff in the pilot:
-->'''Jeff:''' Shirley has earned our respect. Not as a wife, not as a mother, but as a ''woman''. And don’t test her on that, because that thing about the jukebox was ''way too specific'' to be improvised.
** Shirley also threatens Jeff with a pizza slicer at one point.
** She humiliated foosball competitors as a child.
** She also takes to VideoGameCrueltyPotential disconcertingly quickly.
** She's ''extremely'' vicious during the campus-wide pillow fight in "Pillows and Blankets".
* BitchInSheepsClothing: She can come off like this -- her sugary-sweet exterior conceals an extremely short and sometimes vicious temper, a self-righteous and judgemental nature and what can be quite a bitchy personality at times.
* BlackBestFriend: Mostly to Annie but sometimes to Britta, and in one episode, to Jeff.
* CatchPhrase: “Oh, that’s nice!”
** Shirley and Annie’s dual “Awwwwww!”
* TheCastShowoff: Her singing talents have been put to use more than once.
* CharacterDevelopment: In the second half of season 3, her bigotry and self-righteousness is significantly toned down. Possibly because of [[spoiler: her remarriage with Andre.]]
* TheConscience: Shirley sees herself as playing this role within the group; it’s subverted more often than not.
* TheCutie: With her sweet motherly tone, especially during her {{Catch Phrase}}s.
* DeadpanSnarker: “Oh look, Britta brought what she believes in—nothing.”
* FatGirl: Shirley, followed closely by Jeff, is the study group member most often shown concerned about their weight.
* FeminineWomenCanCook: One of her talents is baking, and she hopes to use her business degree to sell her brownies online.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Sanguine
* TheFundamentalist
* GlurgeAddict
* HeelFaceTurn: Did one as a 12-year-old girl, after [[spoiler:making 10-year-old Jeff wet his pants]].
* HidingBehindReligion: Jeff accuses Shirley of this in “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism” [[spoiler:when he learns that Shirley was his childhood bully]]. While he’s (understandably) overwrought at the time and Shirley is a genuinely religious person, a good case can be made that this isn’t actually that far off from the truth; she does tend to use her religious beliefs as a way of feeling superior to others, manipulating them into doing what she wants through guilt and avoiding having to address the less savoury aspects of her personality (such as her volatile temper).
* HolierThanThou: Shirley is both the most passionately religious member of the study group and the most insufferably self-righteous and judgmental about it.
* {{Hypocrite}}: She's not nearly as moral and upstanding as she likes to think she is.
* HypocriticalHumor: Shirley tends to produce this kind of humour, usually by comparing various beliefs/ideas/practices unfavourably to her religious beliefs only to then either engage in the same things herself or by inadvertently suggesting that her particular beliefs are NotSoDifferent to those she condemns in condemning them.
* InnocentBigot: What she tries to pull off toward the members of the study group. It doesn’t go so well.
-->'''Shirley:''' (''to Annie'') I didn’t know you were a … Jew?
* IronicEcho: “That’s not nice...” in “Modern Warfare”.[[note]]To be fair to Shirley, Jeff had explicitly stated his intention to take the prize—priority class registration for the next semester—for himself. However, when he wins the game, he ''does'' offer her the chance to take exclusively morning classes so that she can go home to spend more time with her children.[[/note]]
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Although she can be a self-righteous ass to people [[spoiler:especially in her younger years towards kids like Jeff]], she does insist on being kind and is genuinely happy for anyone in the group when something ‘nice’ happens to them.
* LargeHam: “Ooh! Troy made God mad!”
* [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]: Whenever she uses religion, her TeamMom tendencies or, really, any predicament that befalls her as an excuse to get people to do as she wants.
-->'''Jeff:''' Let me guess. I’m not going to make a [[spoiler:pregnant]] woman storm off?
* NotSoAboveItAll: When Jeff gets into a fight in “Comparative Religion”. At first, she is insistent on considering Jeff ‘dead to her’ if he goes to his fight, but later on she admits the bullies Jeff was facing deserved a nice whooping and gets into it herself. Along with the entire study group.
-->'''Mike:''' What would Shirley do?
-->'''Jeff:''' She would shake your hand and wish you a merry Christmas.
-->(''Mike slams Jeff down'')
-->'''Shirley:''' Jeffrey! '''Kick his ass.'''
** This comes back brilliantly in the video game episode, where at first she is appalled at [[FelonyMisdemeanor Annie killing a (virtual) blacksmith]] … but when his pregnant wife comes downstairs, Shirley sets her on fire and smashes her to death and quickly goes on to make sure the whole family is dead and that the house is completely destroyed once they leave.
* OddCouple: Being a devoutly religious African-American homemaker and housewife, she tends to generate this kind of dynamic with Britta, who is almost her exact opposite in every way. Less so with Annie, whom she seems closer to, as they’re quite similar in many ways.
* PolitenessJudo: Her status as TeamMom gives her this ability. Case in point, the WWBJD bracelets.
* SassyBlackWoman: When she’s not being a GlurgeAddict.
** Actually, Shirley is largely an aversion of this trope, as Yvette Brown points out in [[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/28/community-alison-brie-yvette-nicole-brown-gillian-jacobs-megan-ganz-roundtable.html this roundtable interview]] that she and the show’s other female regulars conducted during their last day of shooting for season 3:
--->“As a black actor, it’s refreshing that I’m not playing the ‘sassy black woman.’ It’s something that Dan Harmon was cognizant of from the beginning. It is something that I’m always cognizant of. Every woman on the planet has sass and smart-ass qualities in them, but it seems sometimes only black women are defined by it. Shirley is a fully formed woman that had a sassy moment. Her natural set point, if anything, is rage. That’s her natural set point, suppressed rage, which comes out as kindness and trying to keep everything tight.”
* ShipperOnDeck: For Jeff and Britta, initially.
* SilkHidingSteel: Usually motherly and sweet, but can go from that to sassy in a second.
* StepfordSmiler: On the mild side of the trope, but she has ‘thinly veiled rage issues’ under her cheer.
* SugarAndIcePersonality: Obviously.
* [[spoiler:SurprisePregnancy: And it works out as a bit of FridgeBrilliance—as a devout Christian, would Shirley use contraception?]]
** [[spoiler: No, but she’s not allowed to have extramarital sex either. Especially with men who are married to someone else.]]
* TeamMom
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: What she wants to be for Jeff, besides Annie and Britta. In fact, she makes no secret of her belief that Jeff is physically attractive.
* TookALevelInBadass: The season two paintball finale.
* {{Tsundere}}: Frequently enough.
* UnreliableNarrator: Concerning her marriage. In season one, almost every reference she made to her husband centred around what a complete and utterly irredeemable bastard he was. Given that when we finally met him he turned out to be a pretty decent guy genuinely contrite about what happened, in addition to it being revealed that Shirley had problems with alcohol in her past, it can be safely assumed that Shirley is exaggerating and may not be as faultless in the original breakdown of her marriage as previously suggested.
* YoungerThanSheLooks: Only two years older than Jeff but her fussiness doesn’t help.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Annie Edison]]
[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alison-brie-as-annie-in-community_8888.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:350:I’m Annie Edison, but people call me Psycho because I had a nervous breakdown in high school.]]
Played by Creator/AlisonBrie.
An insecure and neurotic [[TheSmartGirl overachiever]] attending Greendale following an addiction to prescription medication which ruined her previously flawless high-school record. [[BrainyBrunette Intelligent and driven]], she’s usually perky and cheerful but tends to get tightly-wound and uptight when things fail to go to plan or when matters of grades or academic achievement arise.
* ActorSharedBackground: Both Annie’s InformedJudaism and sexual encounter with a homosexual man are drawn from Alison Brie’s life.
* {{Adorkable}}: Often.
* AffectionateNickname: Vaughn calls her “mountain flower” when they’re dating. She and Jeff sometimes call each other “milady” and “milord.”
* AllLoveIsUnrequited: [[SingleGirlSeeksMostPopularGuy Her crush on Troy that she’s had since high school.]] When he remains [[ObliviousToLove totally oblivious to her]], she decides [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy to let him go]], although she still has a minor breakdown over it.
* AmbitionIsEvil: Played with; Annie does have a tendency to let her ambitions override her morals, but it’s never suggested that her ambitions themselves are bad, per se.
* BadassAdorable: In both {{paintball episode}}s. There are other instances though; in the climatic fight scene in “Comparative Religion,” she can be seen [[FunnyBackgroundEvent viciously whaling on three different opponents and winning]].
** In “Paradigms of Human Memory,” she’s shown to be a purple belt in jiujitsu.
* BeautifulAllAlong:
** She’s an interesting version of this, as rather than being called HollywoodHomely, she’s accepted as being ‘cute’ most of the time, but goes to a more sexy appearance by LettingHerHairDown.
--->'''Jeff:''' Annie’s pretty young. We try not to sexualize her.
** In another odd example, Troy is actually unaware that Annie is attractive until Jeff points it out to him. Then again, Troy is not exactly the brains of the operation. And he did say that that his high school memories with her blurred out her current beauty.
* BerserkButton: Being called "Little Annie Adderall", or taking her pen.
** Don’t [[spoiler:kiss her]], disappear for the summer without contact and then swear [[spoiler:you’re just friends. (Note, this was part of a fake confrontation with Jeff, but she admitted that it started getting a little real. So … acting?)]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Britta's Veronica for Jeff's Archie.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: As "[[Recap/CommunityS1E20TheScienceOfIllusion The Science of Illusion]]", "Anthropology 101", "Accounting For Lawyers" and "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" demonstrate, irking Annie Edison is not recommended. She can ge... aggressive.
** Annie has no issues taking down a man twice her size with chloroform … twice. And she seems totally prepared to do it to Jeff, too.
** She has also punched Jeff in the face and slammed his head into a table. Ouch.
* BreakoutCharacter
* BrainyBrunette
* {{Bridezilla}}: She’s all but building up to be one, judging how she seems to have a huge scrapbook on wedding preparations handy.
* CatchPhrase: Shirley and Annie’s dual “Awwwwww!”
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOoD4755pI Her gasping]].
* ClingyJealousGirl: [[spoiler:She does this to Jeff at the start of season 2.]]
* TheConscience
* CovertPervert: Many instances, but most noticeably in her stint as Hector, the Well Endowed.
** She also suggests that Jeff change his shirt because “it’s not working”, but really it’s just to sneak a peek of his chest.
** While the rest of the study group is averting their eyes from Jeff’s nakedness during his showdown with the Pool Professor, [[EatingTheEyeCandy Annie sneaks a few peaks.]]
* CryCute: Her [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tAs2x4HCfw “Disney face”]].
* CuteBookworm: Especially in the first season.
* CuteAndPsycho: A benign variety, but Annie has been shown to be one failing grade, lousy party, or bad round of model United Nations from a complete mental breakdown.
* TheCutie: Annie is the living, breathing embodiment of this trope.
* DawsonCasting: Annie was 19 years old when the series began, while Alison Brie was 26.
* TheFinickyOne: Starts out this way, but becomes more fun-loving and relaxed as time goes on.
* FormerlyFat
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Choleric
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: She is a veritable machine for this trope.
* GirlinessUpgrade: Applied and then semi-inverted. Annie starts off dressing like a normal 18-year-old, then gradually begins wearing flowery dresses and cardigans more often, to the point that they comprise the bulk of her wardrobe. Come season 5, Annie's wardrobe has undergone a major overhaul to better fit her being more assertive and mature, with her wearing sweaters over blouses and pants.
* GirlsLoveStuffedAnimals: She seems to have quite a healthy collection of them.
* GoGetterGirl
* HiddenDepths: She’s a lot more mature and observant than she lets on, particularly from the third season on. She recognizes her attraction to Jeff [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys for what it is]], and was able to understand and reach Abed on a level that even Troy couldn’t.
* HollywoodNerd and HollywoodHomely: She was unpopular in high school.
** Justified with the revelation that in high school Annie [[FormerlyFat was overweight]], wore braces and had terrible acne. It was only after she went into rehab for her Adderall addiction (after screaming “Everyone’s a robot!” while running through a plate glass door) [[SheIsAllGrownUp that she became attractive]]. That, and she’s clearly neurotic. [[TheOphelia Not that this is necessarily a turn-off]].
** Lampshaded in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E24EnglishAsASecondLanguage English as a Second Language]]” when Jeff scolds her.
--->'''Jeff:''' You are insecure, because you didn’t get hot until ''after'' high school.\\
'''Troy:''' That’s true!
** We finally see what Annie looked like during high school in “[[Recap/CommunityS4E12HeroicOrigins Heroic Origins]],” and she looks exactly as she does in the present day but with glasses, braces, and messy hair.
* IJustWantToBeBadass: Her reason for trying to be the CowboyCop to Shirley’s ByTheBookCop when both become security guards at the school. Shirley seems to think it should be the other way around.
* InformedJudaism
* TheIngenue: She gives this impression, and it’s mostly true (some subversive personal history notwithstanding).
* InnocentBlueEyes
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Annie can come off as being overly competitive, nagging and judgmental, but it’s mostly a front for her own neuroses, and she’s a very nice and caring person underneath it all.
* JewishAndNerdy
* MeaningfulName: ''[[TheCutie Grace]]''.
* MsFanservice: For a series that tries not to sexualize her, Annie certainly does seem to get wet, dirty, endure clothing damage and get undressed quite a bit. Not to mention the fact that she’s the program’s go-to girl for fetishy costumes.
** InnocentFanserviceGirl: She used to wear back braces so she sticks her chest out a lot.
*** In the episode "Accounting for Laywers" there is a moment where Troy and Abed are caught looking at her breasts when she is shaking her chest. To be honest, most male audience members were probably looking at the same thing.
* MoralityPet: To Pierce; he openly admits that she’s his favourite of the group and generally, if he reveals a nicer, more generous or decent side to his personality, Annie will be involved somehow.
** She is also this to Jeff (which feeds into their ShipTease).
* TheOphelia: Especially back in her Adderall days.
* ParentalAbandonment: Annie going to rehab for her Adderall addiction resulted in her being estranged from her family, who would rather have [[StepfordSmiler pretended the whole ordeal never happened]].
* PluckyGirl
* ThePollyanna: This trope could just as easily be called ‘The Annie’.
* ProperTightsWithSkirt : more often from Season 2
* PuppyDogEyes: And she knows how to use them, too.
-->'''Jeff:''' You’re becoming dangerous, Annie. It’s those doe-eyes. Disappointing you is like choking Disney/TheLittleMermaid with a bike chain.
* ScheduleFanatic: Demonstrated in the “Study Break” shorts.
* SeriouslyScruffy: In one of the documentary episodes, the Dean gets Annie to work as a script supervisor while he directs a commercial. He suffers from a severe case of SanitySlippage, and after several days of putting up with his increasingly bizarre demands, Annie is completely out of it and ungroomed. She rationalizes the Dean's behaviour because she doesn't want to admit that she's wasted several weeks of her life helping him.
* SexySantaDress: She wears one in "[[Recap/CommunityS3E10RegionalHolidayMusic Regional Holiday Music]]." Also, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqB52bdaVTE the scene in question]] includes:
** BabyTalk: A la BettyBoop.
** BrainlessBeauty: Pretending that as a Jew she knows nothing about Christmas.
** EveryoneIsChristianAtChristmas: Sarcastically inverted in the lyrics.
* StepfordSmiler: She’s really frustrated with how her life turned out.
* StockingFiller: She mostly wears these.
* SweaterGirl: Cardigans appear to make up about half of her wardrobe.
* SycophanticServant: Annie tends to gravitate towards whoever's in charge in order to feel helpful/wanted, insinuating herself as their [[TheDragon Dragon]] or helper. [[StatusQuoIsGod She usually resets by the end of the episode.]]
* TeachersPet: For instance, in “Physical Education”, instead of putting his binder back, Señor Chang drops it on the floor and orders Annie to pick it up.
* TechnicalVirgin: Some have speculated that she is one, based on A) being high on Adderall, B) having never seen her boyfriend’s (or any man’s) penis, and C) her boyfriend crying throughout the act (Britta theorizes he was gay), leading some fans to (wishfully) think sex never actually occurred.
-->'''Shirley:''' Annie, being a virgin in this day and age is something to be proud of. You’re like a unicorn!
* TeensAreMonsters: She appears to have been on the receiving end of this trope a lot during high school
* TeensAreShort: She is the youngest and shortest member of the group.
* ThirdOptionLoveInterest: [[spoiler:She’s this for Jeff in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E25PascalsTriangleRevisited Pascal’s Triangle Revisited]]”.]]
* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The girly girl to Britta’s tomboy.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Hilariously, every episode that includes Todd, poor guy.
* VerbalTic: Her little half-gasp, half-squeak of indignant horror whenever she’s shocked or offended.
* VocalEvolution: Her voice is getting noticeably less high-pitched and little-girl-ish as the series goes on.
* [[WellDoneSonGuy Well Done Daughter Girl]]: It’s implied at times that a lot of Annie’s issues (including her pill addiction) stem from overly demanding, hypercritical parents, her mother especially, whose expectations she could never hope to meet.
* WhenSheSmiles
* WideEyedIdealist: She calls herself “Irony-Free Annie” for a very good reason.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Troy Barnes]]
[[quoteright:330:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Donald-Glover-as-Troy-community-15622785-449-600_907.jpg]]
->[[caption-width-right:330:Did you know that Gogurt is ''just yogurt''?]]
Played by [[Music/ChildishGambino Donald Glover]].
A charismatic but [[TheDitz not-incredibly-intelligent high-school]] football star and [[JerkJock jock]]. Was previously high-school classmates with Annie, and is Abed’s best friend.
* ActorAllusion: In “[[Recap/CommunityS1E11ThePoliticsOfHumanSexuality The Politics of Human Sexuality]]”, when Pierce discusses bringing a date to the STD fair, Troy muses “There’s a joke here,” and begins to write in his notebook. Donald Glover, in addition to being an actor and musician, is also a standup comedian. In “Advanced Criminal Law”, Abed mentions that Troy, as a joke, says he is related to Danny Glover.
* ActorSharedBackground: Donald Glover was raised a Jehovah’s Witness.
* {{Adorkable}}
* AmbiguouslyBi: Due to copious HoYay.
-->'''Troy:''' (to Abed) All right, let’s do the sex scene.
* [[spoiler:BetterAsFriends: How his relationship with Britta comes to an end.]]
* BettyAndVeronica: The Betty to Jeff's Veronica for Britta's Archie.
* BlackAndNerdy: His friendship with Abed brings out his inner {{geek}}.
* BlackBestFriend: To Abed (although as a TokenMinority himself, it’s divorced of its UnfortunateImplications).
** Pierce invokes this trope by pointing out that his life has meaning now that he has a young African-American friend.
* BookDumb: At least in the beginning.
* BreakoutCharacter
* TheCastShowoff: Glover, who has released AlternativeRap records under the name Childish Gambino, finally gets a chance to rap in “Regional Holiday Music.”
** Also, his dancing skills in “Interpretive Dance”.
* CatchPhrase: “You just wrinkled my brain” and “He/She is like the (insert terrible thing here) of people”. Often attributed to him, [[BeamMeUpScotty though he’s never said it]], is “I like (insert thing here), but also I don’t”.
* CharacterDevelopment[=/=]TookALevelInKindness: The most noticeable example on the series (except for Jeff); starts off as immature and obsessed with popularity, becomes a responsible and kind young man who’s able to hold the group together in trying times.
* CloudCuckoolander
** CloudCuckoolandersMinder: To Abed, who is definitely the more odd and irresponsible of the two.
* DawsonCasting[=/=]PlayingGertrude: Donald Glover is actually nine months ''younger'' than Alison Brie, roles more or less inverted by their respective characters.
* TheDitz[=/=]DumbMuscle[=/=]PopularIsDumb: A classic example. God bless him, he is not the brightest bulb in the box.
-->'''Jeff:''' I want you to clear your mind.\\
'''Troy:''' (''immediately'') Done.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Phlegmatic
* TheGift: He’s a plumbing and air-conditioning-repair prodigy. [[RefusalOfTheCall Not that he wants to do either of those things.]]
** The end of Season 3 [[spoiler: ultimately sees him embrace his gift for air-conditioning repair.]]
* TheHeart: Later seasons have gradually suggested that Troy might be this for the study group; it’s quite notable that on the few occasions it’s suggested or looked like he’s about to leave, things have fallen apart for everyone very quickly.
** He’s usually the one who tries to stop the others from resorting to violence. But even he has his moments of weakness, it is he who suggests killing Annie after she reveals that she [[spoiler:[[Recap/CommunityS2E04BasicRocketScience sabotaged the space simulation]]]].
* HeterosexualLifePartners: With Abed. [[HoYay Maybe]].
* HiddenDepths: Has a talent for mechanical maintenance and is a phenomenal (interpretive) dancer.
* HollywoodJehovahsWitness: Averted. He is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and this is often referenced and demonstrated in that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas or birthdays. However, you otherwise couldn’t tell that he was a Witness if he didn’t say so.
-->''“Yeah, but we don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas and we can’t drink. But it helps.”''
* InnocentInaccurate
* IWantToBeARealMan
* JerkJock[=/=]DumbJock: He’s more {{lovable|Jock}} now but apparently in high school, and to a degree in the early episodes of the show, Troy wasn’t without his {{Jerkass}} side, as demonstrated in “[[Recap/CommunityS1E06FootballFeminismAndYou Football, Feminism and You]]” when a chance to join the Greendale football team ends up with him strutting around in a self-obsessed manner lambasting people at random with his “politically conservative high school’s shamefully outdated fight rap(s).”
** BlackAndNerdy: Hanging out with Abed has had an effect on him, in that he’s gradually lost interest in his former jock pursuits and has embraced his inner geek more.
* LargeHam
* TheLeader: He occasionally supplants Jeff in the role. Unlike Jeff, he’s a clear Type II.
* LovableJock: If Troy didn’t start out as this, then he’s certainly grown into it.
* {{Malaproper}}: Some of his gems include “all tomato” (ultimatum), “escape goat” (scapegoat) and “jugglenaut” (juggernaut).
* ManChild: Troy's last year of high school he witnesses Annie scream during a party “Everyone’s a robot!” as she ran through a window. As a result, it seems Troy remains a man-child out of fear. Shortly after Annie's dramatic departure Troy faked an injury by doing a keg flip. Troy's fake injury guaranteed that he could remain in his comfort zone as a man-child a little while longer. By delaying manhood he could continue to live a fun care-free life and not become an adult weighed down by the responsibilities of life thus becoming a robot. During a wedding Troy and Abed make an agreement not to act "weird". However, "weird" is really code for their childlike behaviors. When Troy sees the the monkey which he named "Annie's Boobs" run into the air ducts, he uses this as an excuse to escape the conformity (robot behaviors) of the adults around him. Abed would have continued with his appropriate adult like behaviors at the wedding had it not been for Troy pulling him back into the comfort of behaving like children together.
* MessianicArchetype: He’s apparently this for the air-conditioning repair school. Much to his bemusement.
* NiceGuy: As mentioned above, there’s a reason he and Britta are the only two members of the study group who haven’t taken a villainous role in the group at some point.
* ObliviousToLove: He is completely clueless to Annie’s obsession with him for ''years''. Ironically, Troy later finds himself in Annie’s shoes when Britta is oblivious to ''his'' crush.
* OnlySaneMan: A weird example. Troy is often shown to be an enormous CloudCuckooLander and man child, but only when interacting with Abed. When Abed’s not around, Troy is often the most normal member of the group.
* OutOfFocus: Only appears in five episodes of Season 5.
* {{Put on a B|us}}oat: For the rest of Season 5 (with Levar Burton). [[spoiler: They are captured by Mexican Gulf pirates the next episode as noted in a background newsfeed.]]
* RealMenDontCry: {{Averted|Trope}}, he cries often.
** Then lampshaded by Troy himself in “[[Recap/CommunityS2E10MixologyCertification Mixology Certification]]” by his reaction to getting a birthday cake with Jehovah’s Witness-appropriate language.
--->'''Troy:''' (''reading'') “Hello during a random dessert, the month and day of which coincide numerically with your expulsion from a uterus.” You guys, I ''[[BlatantLies never]]'' [[BlatantLies cry, but …]]
* RealMenWearPink
* RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Abed's Blue.
* [[spoiler:RelationshipUpgrade: With Britta between Season 3 and 4.]]
* SayingTooMuch: He does this at least twice, adding “Whoops/Oops” without actually changing his tone.
-->“How do you know it was ''our'' design? We submitted it anonymously. Whoops.”
-->“[[ItMakesSenseInContext You don’t like your movie, we can’t say the word Blade, there’s phones in the refrigerator, ooops.]]”
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: His usual reaction to any crisis is to start screaming and crying like a six-year-old girl. Usually accompanied with a jumpy little tantrum.
-->''“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING.”''
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Manly Man to Abed’s Sensitive Guy.
-->You could say Troy fills this trope all by himself, since he goes from manly man to sensitive guy at the drop of a hat.
* StepfordSmiler: In high school.
-->''“I was forced to smile when I didn’t feel like it.”''
* TwoferTokenMinority: African-American Jehovah’s Witness.
* UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo: Briefly with Annie.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Has a deathly fear of rats.
[[/folder]]
